Chapter 3: The First Day
---
Dawn broke over the Dao Seeking Sect like spilled gold.
Shen Yi had been awake for hours. Sleep hadn't come easily—his mind kept circling back to the Founder's words, the ancient book in his robe, the three thousand strangers who were now his fellow disciples. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the old man's face, heard the river flowing, felt the weight of something immense pressing down on his soul.
So he had risen before the sun, found this rock overlooking the valley, and watched the darkness slowly retreat.
The view was... staggering.
From here, he could see the entire sect spread out below—the crude wooden huts, the half-finished dining hall, the clearing where they had gathered last night. Beyond that, the forest stretched for miles, a carpet of green that eventually gave way to mountains. And beyond the mountains...
Shen Yi squinted.
Beyond the mountains, the sky looked wrong. Not the color—that was normal, shifting from deep purple to pale gold as the sun rose. But the texture of it. Like there was something just behind the blue, pressing against it. Shapes. Movements. Things that existed in a space his eyes couldn't quite focus on.
"The view gets stranger the longer you look."
Shen Yi didn't startle. He had sensed someone approaching—a benefit of even minimal cultivation, he was learning—and had simply waited.
The man who sat down beside him was perhaps fifty, with a weathered face and hands that bore the calluses of a lifetime of labor. His cultivation, as far as Shen Yi could tell, was almost nonexistent—Qi Condensation Level 1, maybe. Lower than Shen Yi himself.
"Saw you sitting here," the man said. "Figured you might want company. Or not." He shrugged. "I'm okay with either."
Shen Yi studied him for a moment. "You're a disciple?"
"Unfortunately." The man's smile was wry. "Name's Old Zhang. Was a farmer for forty years. Decided I wanted more from life than watching rice grow." He gestured at himself. "Turns out, starting cultivation at fifty with no spiritual roots and a body that's spent four decades bending over in fields... not ideal."
"What happened to your old sect?"
"Didn't have one. Couldn't get in." Old Zhang's smile didn't waver. "Tried a dozen. They took one look at my age and my roots and laughed me out the gate. Eventually I stopped trying."
"So how did you end up here?"
"Founder found me." Old Zhang's eyes softened. "I was working my field, same as always. He just... appeared. Asked if I wanted to cultivate. I laughed at him—told him I was too old, too broken, too worthless." He paused. "He laughed back. Said that was exactly why he was asking."
Shen Yi felt something shift in his chest.
"That's what he said to me too," he murmured. "About my spiritual roots. About being broken."
Old Zhang nodded slowly. "He collects us, doesn't he? The broken ones. The discarded ones. The ones everyone else threw away." He looked out at the valley. "Three thousand of us, all with the same story. All told we were trash. All told we'd never amount to anything."
He turned to Shen Yi, and for the first time, his eyes held something sharp beneath the gentle surface.
"And now we're here. With a teacher who could probably destroy this entire continent with a thought. You know what that means?"
Shen Yi shook his head.
"It means someone finally looked at us and saw something worth investing in." Old Zhang stood, brushing dirt from his worn robes. "I don't know about you, young man, but I'm not going to waste this chance. If the Founder thinks this old farmer can become something, then by the gods, I'm going to prove him right."
He walked away, leaving Shen Yi alone with his thoughts.
The sun continued to rise.
---
The training ground was chaos.
Three thousand seven hundred forty-four disciples had gathered in the main clearing, and despite the Founder's complete absence, they had organized themselves into rough groups based on... something. Shen Yi couldn't figure out what. Age? Cultivation level? Proximity to where they happened to be standing?
It didn't matter, because no one knew what they were supposed to be doing.
"When does training start?"
"Where's the Founder?"
"Should we be practicing something?"
"What do we practice?"
Shen Yi stood at the edge of the crowd, Xiao Cai attached to his side like a small, hungry barnacle. She had found him immediately upon waking and had not let go since.
"Are they always like this?" he asked.
Xiao Cai shrugged. "First time I've seen them all together. Usually everyone just does whatever they want."
"And what do you do?"
"Eat." She said it like it was obvious. "Then sleep. Then eat again."
Shen Yi looked down at her. "Don't you want to cultivate?"
"Cultivation sounds hard. Eating is easy." She paused. "Also, I don't know how."
Before Shen Yi could respond, the crowd's murmuring suddenly ceased.
The Founder stood at the center of the clearing.
No one had seen him arrive. He was simply there—a man in green robes, hands clasped behind his back, looking at the assembled disciples with an expression of mild amusement.
"Good morning," he said.
The silence held for three full seconds. Then, from somewhere in the back:
"FOUNDER!"
The spell broke. Questions erupted from every direction:
"When do we start training?"
"What techniques will you teach us?"
"How do we fix our spiritual roots?"
"Can we have breakfast first?"
The Founder raised one hand.
Silence.
"Breakfast," he said, "is in the dining hall. Eat quickly. Training begins in one hour."
He vanished.
The crowd exploded into motion.
---
One hour later, Shen Yi stood in the training ground with three thousand seven hundred forty-three other disciples, feeling profoundly confused.
They had been arranged—somehow, no one remembered how—into rows and columns, facing a large empty space at the center of the clearing. The Founder stood in that space, looking at them with an expression that might have been approval.
"Good," he said. "You can follow simple instructions. That's more than I expected."
A ripple of uncertain laughter.
"Today is your first day of training. I'm not going to teach you techniques. I'm not going to give you cultivation methods. I'm not going to fix your broken spiritual roots or heal your crippled meridians."
He paused, letting the words sink in.
"Today, I'm going to teach you something more important than all of that."
He raised his hand, and the ground beneath them began to tremble.
Shen Yi stumbled, grabbing Xiao Cai to keep her upright. Around him, disciples cried out in alarm as the earth shifted and cracked—
And then rose.
The entire training ground—a circular area perhaps half a mile across—lifted into the air like a massive stone platform. Shen Yi dropped to his knees, clutching the ground as they ascended past the treetops, past the mountain's lower peaks, past the clouds—
They stopped.
Shen Yi looked up.
They were floating in the sky, surrounded by nothing but air and distant mountains. Below, the Dao Seeking Sect had shrunk to a tiny cluster of buildings. Above, the sky pressed down, close and vast at the same time.
"THIS," the Founder's voice boomed from everywhere at once, "is where training begins."
He stood at the platform's edge, looking utterly unconcerned about the mile-high drop.
"Fear," he said. "That's your first lesson."
He gestured, and the platform tilted.
Screams erupted. Disciples slid toward the edge, clutching at each other, at cracks in the stone, at anything. Shen Yi grabbed Xiao Cai with one hand and a protruding rock with the other, his heart hammering against his ribs.
The platform tilted further.
"The fear of falling," the Founder continued calmly, "is one of the oldest fears. Hardwired into every living thing. You can't reason with it. You can't negotiate with it. You can only feel it."
Another tilt. Several disciples lost their grip and slid—but before they could fall, invisible hands caught them, held them suspended over the void, their screams echoing in the thin air.
"LOOK," the Founder commanded.
The suspended disciples stopped screaming long enough to look down. Below them, the ground waited. Distant. Unforgiving.
"This is what fear feels like," the Founder said. "This emptiness in your chest. This certainty of death. This absolute conviction that you are about to end."
He walked among the suspended disciples, stepping on air as easily as solid ground.
"Your entire lives, you've been told you're worthless. You've been rejected, abandoned, discarded. And every time, you felt this. The fear of being nothing. The fear of having no future. The fear that they were right."
He stopped beside a young woman who was weeping silently, suspended a foot from the platform's edge.
"But you're still here."
He touched her forehead, and she floated gently back to the platform.
"Fear didn't kill you. It never does. What kills you is letting fear control you."
The platform slowly righted itself.
One by one, the suspended disciples were returned to solid ground. Some collapsed, sobbing. Others sat in stunned silence. A few—a very few—stood trembling but upright, meeting the Founder's eyes with something like defiance.
Shen Yi was one of them.
He had never liked heights. His heart was still pounding, his hands still shaking, his breath still coming in short gasps. But he was standing. Xiao Cai was still tucked against his side, and she was standing too—though she looked more annoyed than afraid.
"That was mean," she said loudly.
The Founder turned to her, one eyebrow raised.
"You scared everyone. For no reason." She glared at him. "That's mean."
A long silence.
Then the Founder laughed.
It was a real laugh—warm and genuine, utterly unlike his usual calm amusement. He walked over to Xiao Cai and crouched down to her level.
"You're right," he said. "It was mean."
"So say sorry."
More silence. Shen Yi felt his soul trying to leave his body. You didn't talk to the Founder like that. You didn't demand apologies from a being who could destroy galaxies—
"I'm sorry," the Founder said.
Every disciple within earshot stopped breathing.
The Founder stood, still smiling. "She's right. I should have explained first." He raised his voice to address the entire crowd. "What I just did—the fear you felt—that was lesson one. Not because I enjoy terrifying you. Because you need to understand something."
He spread his arms.
"Fear is not your enemy. Fear is your warning system. It tells you when something is dangerous. It tells you when you're in over your head. It tells you when to run."
He lowered his arms.
"But fear also lies. It tells you that you can't. It tells you that you're not enough. It tells you that the people who rejected you were right."
He looked at them—all three thousand seven hundred forty-four.
"Today, you felt fear. Real fear. The fear of falling, of dying, of being nothing. And you survived."
"Tomorrow, when you face a technique you can't master, a realm you can't break through, an enemy you can't defeat—remember this moment. Remember that fear didn't kill you."
"Remember that you survived."
The platform began to descend.
---
Back on solid ground, the disciples dispersed in a daze. Some went straight to their huts, too shaken to do anything else. Others gathered in small groups, talking in hushed voices about what they had experienced.
Shen Yi found a quiet spot near the forest edge and sat down, Xiao Cai beside him.
"That was..." He searched for words.
"Mean," Xiao Cai supplied.
"He explained why, though."
"Still mean." She pulled a small piece of dried meat from her robe and began chewing. "But I get it. Fear doesn't kill you. That's what my mom used to say."
Shen Yi looked at her. "Your mom?"
Xiao Cai chewed for a moment, her eyes distant. "Before the bad people came. She said fear is like a dog. If you run from it, it chases you. If you stand still, it might bite, but it might also just... sniff you and leave."
She swallowed.
"She was brave. I'm not brave. I just get hungry."
Shen Yi didn't know what to say to that. So he sat in silence, watching the disciples mill about, and thought about fear.
He had felt it many times. When his father died. When the sects rejected him. When the deacon threw his token in the mud. Every time, the fear had whispered: You're nothing. You'll never be anything. Give up.
And every time, he hadn't.
Not because he was brave. Because giving up meant his father's death meant nothing. His father's dreams meant nothing. His own existence meant nothing.
He couldn't accept that.
"Hey."
He looked up. Old Zhang stood before him, looking surprisingly steady despite the morning's ordeal.
"Founder wants to see you. Senior Disciple, he said."
Shen Yi blinked. "Me?"
"You're the Senior Disciple, aren't you? First among equals?" Old Zhang shrugged. "Go. I'll watch the little one."
Xiao Cai looked up, alarmed. "I don't need watching."
"Yes you do. You're small. Small things need watching."
"I'm not that small!"
Shen Yi stood, hiding a smile. "I'll be back soon. Don't cause trouble."
Xiao Cai's offended expression followed him all the way to the Founder's hut.
---
The Founder's dwelling was, like everything else in the sect, absurdly modest. A simple wooden hut with a straw roof, a single room barely large enough for a bed and a table. The only unusual feature was the ceiling—or rather, the lack of one. Instead of wood and straw, the roof opened onto a view of stars that shouldn't have been visible in daylight.
The Founder sat at the table, a cup of tea before him, looking exactly like an ordinary man taking a morning break.
"Sit," he said, gesturing to the empty chair.
Shen Yi sat.
"Tea?"
"I... yes. Thank you."
The Founder poured. The tea was simple—green, fragrant, unremarkable. Shen Yi sipped it, waiting.
"You handled yourself well today," the Founder said finally. "On the platform. You were afraid—I could feel it—but you didn't break."
Shen Yi didn't know how to respond to that, so he said nothing.
"Xiao Cai likes you. That's rare. She doesn't trust easily." The Founder's eyes held something unreadable. "She watched her entire village die. Her parents, her neighbors, everyone she knew. She survived by hiding in a hole for three days without food or water."
Shen Yi's hands tightened on his cup.
"She was five years old."
The silence stretched.
"I found her six years later, still scavenging for food in the ruins. Still alone. Still hungry." The Founder set down his cup. "She had every reason to become bitter. Cruel. Broken. Instead, she became... Xiao Cai. Fierce about food. Protective of those who show her kindness. Unwilling to let the world make her hard."
He looked at Shen Yi.
"You remind me of her, in a way. Not the circumstances—I know your story. Father died. Sects rejected you. Years of being called worthless." He paused. "And yet here you are. Still standing. Still trying."
Shen Yi's throat felt tight. "I don't know how to be anything else."
"That's exactly why I chose you."
The Founder stood, walked to the door, and looked out at the sect spread below.
"I'm going to tell you something, Shen Yi. Something I've never told anyone."
He turned.
"I am the most powerful being in existence. I have lived for so long that I've forgotten my own name. I have created worlds and destroyed them. I have walked through time like others walk through streets."
His voice softened.
"And I am so terribly, unbearably lonely."
The words hung in the air between them.
"For millions of years, I've searched for someone who could stand beside me. Someone who could look at me and see... not a god. Not a monster. Just... someone."
He smiled, and for the first time, Shen Yi saw something human in those ancient eyes.
"I thought I would never find them. But then the system came. And it told me to take disciples. To teach. To guide."
He walked back to the table and sat down.
"You're my first, Shen Yi. The first person I chose. The first person I believed in."
"I don't expect you to understand what that means. Not yet. But one day, when you've climbed high enough to look back, you will."
He reached across the table and placed his hand over Shen Yi's.
"Until then, just keep going. Keep getting up. Keep proving them wrong."
"That's all I ask."
---
Shen Yi left the Founder's hut in a daze.
His mind was spinning—too many thoughts, too many emotions, too much weight pressing down on shoulders that had never been meant to carry such things.
He walked without direction, eventually finding himself back at the training ground. Most of the disciples had gone, but a few remained, practicing basic stances or meditating in small groups.
Among them was the bully from yesterday—the one whose nose Shen Yi had bloodied.
He was sitting alone at the edge of the clearing, staring at the ground. His nose was bandaged, and his posture held none of yesterday's arrogance.
Shen Yi walked over.
The bully looked up, flinched, then forced himself to hold still. "Come to finish the job?"
Shen Yi sat down beside him. "What's your name?"
The bully stared at him like he'd grown a second head. "What?"
"Your name. What is it?"
A long pause. "...Wei Chen."
"Wei Chen." Shen Yi nodded. "I'm Shen Yi."
"I know who you are. Everyone knows. Senior Disciple." The words held no mockery now—just flat acknowledgment.
Shen Yi was quiet for a moment. "Why did you take that boy's bundle?"
Wei Chen's jaw tightened. "Does it matter?"
"To me, yes."
Another long pause. Then, so quietly Shen Yi almost didn't hear:
"Because I could."
Shen Yi waited.
"My whole life, people have pushed me around. My older brother—the one at Qi Condensation Level 8—he beats me whenever he visits. My father beat me before that. The sect elders back home... they all had someone above them to take it out on." Wei Chen's voice was flat, empty. "Yesterday, I saw that kid with his bundle, and I thought... finally. Someone I can push around. Someone weaker than me."
He laughed, bitter and broken.
"Then you showed up. Weaker than me. Lower cultivation than me. And you knocked me on my ass."
He turned to look at Shen Yi.
"Tell me something. How do you do it? How do you get hit and keep getting up?"
Shen Yi thought about the question. Really thought about it.
"I don't know," he admitted. "I just... can't stop. If I stop, then everything my father believed was wrong. Everything he worked for was for nothing. If I stop, then they were right—I am trash."
He looked at Wei Chen.
"But you're not trash either. You're just... someone who got hurt and didn't know what else to do with it."
Wei Chen stared at him for a long moment. Then, slowly, his eyes reddened.
"I don't know how to be anything else," he whispered.
Shen Yi almost smiled. "Neither do I. But I'm learning."
He stood and offered his hand.
"Train with me tomorrow. Properly. Not fighting—training. We'll figure it out together."
Wei Chen looked at the offered hand like it might bite. Then, slowly, he reached out and took it.
"Okay."
---
That night, Shen Yi sat on his rock again, watching the stars.
Xiao Cai was asleep in their hut—they had been assigned adjacent beds, and she had claimed his as her preferred napping spot. Old Zhang was probably in his own hut, dreaming of rice fields. Wei Chen was somewhere in the sect, maybe sleeping, maybe staring at the ceiling, maybe wondering if tomorrow would be different.
Three thousand seven hundred forty-four disciples. All broken. All discarded. All given a chance.
And him. Senior Disciple. The first.
He reached into his robe and pulled out the ancient book. Its pages seemed to glow faintly in the starlight, the characters shifting and flowing as they always did.
He opened to the first page.
"The strongest chains are the ones we cannot see."
He read it again. And again. And again.
Then, slowly, he began