Four days passed.
Li Zhiwei spent them farming. The field that had been waiting since before the testing got finished. The soil was turned, prepared, ready for spring planting when the season arrived. Then he helped Aunt Han with other tasks. Repairing the fence that bordered their small plot. Clearing the irrigation channel that had accumulated debris over winter. Mending tools that had developed cracks from use and age.
Work that needed doing. Work that would always need doing. The eternal cycle of maintenance and preparation that defined farming life.
His body moved through these tasks with practiced efficiency. His hands knew what to do. His muscles remembered the motions.
But his mind was elsewhere.
It kept returning to the same moment. Standing in the Han Xu Sect's courtyard. Hands pressed against the Testing Stone. The warmth of crystal against his palms.
And nothing happening.
Except that wasn't quite accurate. Something had happened. Elder Qin had said so explicitly. The stone had rejected measurement. Actively rejected it, in a way that was unusual enough for a veteran of forty years to notice and record.
What did that mean?
Li Zhiwei drove his hoe into the earth and paused, staring at the turned soil without really seeing it.
Everyone said the Testing Stone was perfect. Absolute. Three thousand years of accuracy. When it said you had spiritual roots, you did. When it said you didn't, you didn't. The judgment was fact, not opinion.
But the stone measured spiritual roots specifically. That was its function. Its purpose. The thing it was designed to detect.
What if there were other things it wasn't designed to detect? Other structures or possibilities or pathways that simply fell outside its measurement parameters?
A tool could only find what it was built to find.
"You're doing it again."
Aunt Han's voice pulled him back to the present. She was working the adjacent row, watching him with an expression that mixed concern and exhaustion.
"Doing what?"
"Standing there holding your hoe like it's a decorative object. Staring at nothing." She straightened, pressing a hand to her lower back. "You've been like this for days. Present but absent. Working but thinking about something else."
Li Zhiwei pulled his hoe free and resumed the motion of turning soil. "Just processing."
"Processing what happened at the testing won't change what happened." She returned to her work with steady rhythm. "You don't have spiritual roots. That's the answer. Now comes accepting it."
"The Testing Stone behaved strangely. Elder Qin said so."
"Strange or not, the result was rejection. That's what matters."
Li Zhiwei worked for a few more moments before speaking again. "When I was young, father used to tell me stories about cultivation. About the legendary heroes. Ren Zu. The Nine Saints. Chen Wuji."
"I remember. He spent entire winters filling your head with those tales."
"He knew a lot about cultivation. More than a farmer should know."
Aunt Han's rhythm didn't change. "Your father read books. Listened to traveling merchants. He was curious about the world. That's all."
"Was it?"
She stopped hoeing and turned to look at him directly. "What are you asking?"
"I'm asking if father was just a farmer. If he'd always been just a farmer."
"What else would he have been?"
"I don't know. That's what I'm asking."
Aunt Han's expression hardened slightly. "Your father was a good man who worked this land and provided for his family. That's what he was. Why are you digging into this now?"
"Because I keep thinking about something he said. Before he died." Li Zhiwei set down his hoe. "He told me to get tested. To find out if I had spiritual roots. He said 'become what I couldn't be.' What did he mean by that?"
"He meant he wished he'd had the opportunity you had. The chance to be tested. To know one way or another." Aunt Han returned to her hoeing with slightly more force than necessary. "Not everyone gets to try. He wanted you to have that chance."
"But he said 'couldn't be,' not 'wasn't allowed to be.' That's different."
"You're reading too much into a dying man's words."
"Am I?"
Aunt Han stopped working entirely and faced him with an expression he'd rarely seen. Not anger. Not quite. But something close to it. Frustration mixed with something else. Protectiveness, maybe.
"Your father is dead, Li Zhiwei. Whatever he meant, whatever he wished for, it's gone. You don't have spiritual roots. He didn't either, most likely. Our family farms. That's what we do. That's what we've always done." She gestured at the field around them. "This is real. This is what's in front of you. Stop looking backward for mysteries that don't exist and focus on what's actually here."
The sharpness in her voice was unusual. Aunt Han rarely raised her voice, rarely showed this kind of edge.
Li Zhiwei studied her face and saw something he hadn't expected. Not just frustration. Fear. She was afraid of something.
"What aren't you telling me?"
"I'm not telling you to let go of fantasies and accept reality. Is that clear enough?"
"That's not what I mean."
"Then what do you mean?"
"You knew father. You knew him before I was born. You know more about him than you've ever said." Li Zhiwei kept his voice level. Calm. "I'm not asking you to break any promises. I'm just trying to understand who he was."
Aunt Han was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice was softer but still guarded.
"Your father came to this village when I was young. Maybe twenty years before you were born. He appeared one day, bought a small plot of land, and started farming. No one knew where he came from. No one asked too many questions because that's not what we do here."
She paused, choosing her words carefully.
"He was good at farming. Too good, actually. Like he'd studied it rather than learned it by doing. He knew things about soil and irrigation and crop rotation that took other people decades to figure out. But he never explained how he knew."
"Did he ever talk about his past?"
"No. And the one time someone asked directly, his expression..." She shook her head. "It made clear the subject was closed. After that, people stopped asking."
"But you knew him better than most. You were friends with mother."
"I was. And your mother never knew either. She asked him once, early in their marriage. He told her, 'I'm whoever I am now. The person I was before doesn't matter.'" Aunt Han picked up her hoe again. "That was the only answer he ever gave anyone."
Li Zhiwei absorbed this. His father had been running from something. Or hiding from something. Had deliberately obscured his past and refused all inquiries.
"Did he ever do anything unusual? Anything that suggested he knew about cultivation?"
"He told stories. That's all. Stories he'd heard or read somewhere. That doesn't make him a cultivator." Aunt Han's voice was firm. "And even if it did, even if he'd been some failed disciple or washout from a sect, what would that change? He still ended up here. Still ended up farming. Still died of an illness that any actual cultivator could have prevented."
The words landed with weight.
She was right. Whatever his father had been, he'd ended as a farmer. Died as a farmer. The outcome was the same regardless of what had come before.
"Now can we finish this field?" Aunt Han said. "Or are we going to spend the rest of the day chasing shadows?"
Li Zhiwei picked up his hoe and returned to work.
They labored in silence for the rest of the afternoon. The sun moved across the sky. The field gradually took shape. The work continued without need for conversation.
But Li Zhiwei's mind didn't stop processing.
His father had known things he shouldn't have known. Had arrived in the village from somewhere else, with knowledge he never explained. Had told his son to get tested, to "become what I couldn't be."
That phrasing mattered. Couldn't, not didn't. Couldn't implied attempt. Implied failure. Implied trying and failing rather than never trying at all.
But Aunt Han either didn't know more or wouldn't say more. And pushing would only make her more defensive, more protective of whatever she was protecting.
The information he needed wouldn't come from her.
As evening approached, they collected their tools and walked back to the house. The routine continued. Meal preparation. Eating. Cleaning. Rest.
Li Zhiwei went through the motions, but his thoughts were elsewhere.
He had questions and no clear path to answers. Aunt Han knew something but wouldn't share it. His father had taken his secrets to the grave. The Testing Stone had revealed an anomaly but no explanation.
He was working with fragments. Pieces of information that suggested something without revealing what that something was.
After the meal, after Aunt Han had gone to sleep, Li Zhiwei lay on his sleeping mat and thought about what he actually knew versus what he was assuming.
Facts: His father had unusual knowledge. The Testing Stone rejected measurement in his case. Elder Qin noted it as unprecedented.
Assumptions: His father had tried alternative cultivation. The anomaly meant something significant. There were other paths besides spiritual roots.
The assumptions were built on hope more than evidence. Might be completely wrong.
But the facts were real. Verifiable. His father had known things. The stone had behaved strangely. Those were observations, not wishes.
What did they mean?
Li Zhiwei stared at the ceiling and realized something.
He couldn't answer these questions lying here. Couldn't solve them through thinking alone. If answers existed, they existed somewhere else. In texts he hadn't read. In knowledge he didn't possess. In places he'd need to go and sources he'd need to find.
The field would be finished tomorrow. After that, he had a choice.
Accept farming. Let the questions die unanswered. Live the life that was available to him.
Or pursue answers. Even without knowing if answers existed. Even if the search led nowhere.
The safe choice was obvious.
But Li Zhiwei realized something else: he'd never been particularly good at making safe choices.
Not because he was brave. He didn't feel brave. He felt uncertain, actually. Unsure whether this was wisdom or foolishness.
But he couldn't stop thinking about it. Couldn't stop asking questions. Couldn't stop noticing that the Testing Stone's behavior had been unprecedented, which meant something unusual had occurred, which meant something existed to understand even if he didn't understand it yet.
In the darkness, he made a decision.
Tomorrow, finish the field. That was non-negotiable.
After that, start investigating. Not attempting to cultivate. Not training through sheer determination. Just investigating. Finding whatever texts existed about cultivation theory. Talking to whoever might know something. Trying to understand whether his father's cryptic words and the Testing Stone's anomaly actually connected to something real.
He might find nothing. Probably would find nothing.
But not looking felt worse than wasting effort on a search that led nowhere.
He closed his eyes, though sleep was still distant.
Questions had weight. They didn't disappear just because you ignored them. They persisted. Demanded attention. Grew heavier with time.
He'd rather chase impossible questions than spend his life wondering what would have happened if he'd tried.
Outside, darkness covered the village. No mysterious observers watched. No cosmic forces took note. Just a young man in a small house deciding to pursue questions he didn't know how to answer.
The field still needed finishing.
But after that, everything became uncertain.
And uncertainty, he was learning, felt less like dread and more like the only path forward that didn't require lying to himself about what he wanted to know.
Tomorrow, the field.
After tomorrow, the questions.
Wherever they led.