Scrape. Thwack. Scrape.
Forty minutes.
That was my best estimate. I had been lying face-down in the mint leaves for forty minutes, and the girl in the yellow robes had not stopped talking once.
"The root network of a mature Blood-Bane Orchid is incredibly sensitive to localized spiritual pressure," she said. The metal trowel bit into the dirt three inches from my right ear. "Most people over-water them. It's a tragedy, really. You have to let them think they're starving, or the medicinal properties never crystallize."
I breathed in. The smell of crushed mint and wet loam filled my nose. My spine felt like someone had packed it with crushed glass. The adrenaline crash shredded whatever fuel I had left.
I couldn't move my legs. I was fairly certain my left arm belonged to someone else.
"I found twelve distinct variants of shade-moss just near the eastern wall," the girl continued, tapping her trowel against a rock. "Which is fascinating. The soil compaction over there is strange, though. I thought I saw a rather large cat in the shadows last night. Standing on two legs. Very quiet. I didn't want to disturb its hunting."
My heart gave a single, hard thump against the dirt.
A two-legged cat.
I kept my eyes shut tight. I filed that terrifying piece of information into the growing mental folder labeled: Things Actively Trying To Kill Me.
"Anyway," she said, the trowel pausing. "The point is, this garden is a mess. A beautiful, spectacular mess. The previous sect master clearly had an eye for rare seeds but absolutely no understanding of cross-pollination."
"He was busy," I said into the dirt.
My voice was muffled by a clump of topsoil. It made me sound like I was choking on a carrot.
"I can see that," she agreed. "The front gate is broken. And there's a man bleeding on your stones out there. Though I suppose he's sleeping now."
I finally cracked one eye open.
She was sitting on her heels, wiping her forehead with the back of her wrist. Golden-brown hair tied into two uneven buns. Her hands were coated in a fine, silvery powder. It smelled like burnt sugar and ozone. Pill-dust.
Not a scavenger. Not a collector. Just an alchemist who had walked past a bleeding mercenary in a shattered courtyard and decided the real tragedy was the over-watered orchids.
"You've been digging," I managed to say. It took effort to form the words. My jaw was stiff.
"Yes." She smiled. The smile reached all the way to her eyes, entirely unbothered by the blood on the flagstones outside. "I have a portable furnace. A tier-three brass construct. It's a bit heavy, but it gets the job done. I can process raw materials on site. If you let me stay, I mean."
I closed my eye again.
I stared at the dark behind my eyelids. Negative four thousand stones, zero medicine, and one kid who cried at loud noises.
And a wandering alchemist had just asked if she could pay rent to live in my weeds.
Please, I thought. Stay. Never leave. I will build you a house with my bare hands if my bare hands ever start working again.
"I can pay in foundation-grade pills," she offered, perhaps taking my silence for rejection. "Five a week? I'd just need unrestricted access to the garden. And maybe a roof. It rained on me Tuesday."
The dead man's spine took over.
I pushed my hands flat against the dirt.
My triceps burned. The shaking in my arms knocked my elbows against my ribs as I dragged myself up. The garden instantly tilted thirty degrees, but I locked my knees.
I spent ten agonizing seconds brushing the loose soil from my dark robes. Each swipe of my hand across the silk cost me air.
I looked down at her.
"Wen Xiaoliu," she said, offering a small, seated bow.
"You may remain as a guest," I said. I forced the words out flat and heavy. "Do not disturb the eastern wall."
Her honey-colored eyes lit up. "Thank you, Sect Master! I promise you won't regret it. I'll start cataloging the western slope tomorrow."
She immediately turned back to the dirt, humming an off-key folk tune.
I pivoted. Straight back, measured footsteps, blind navigation through the lateral corridor until the shadows of the main hall swallowed me.
The moment the stone wall hid me from her sight, I collapsed against it.
I hit the cold granite shoulder-first and slid down until I was sitting on the floor. I pulled my knees to my chest. I couldn't catch my breath. The air kept catching at the top of my throat in dry, ragged gasps.
A blue rectangle snapped into existence in the dark hallway.
[ SOUL RESONANCE DETECTED — WEN XIAOLIU ]
[ STAGE 0.8 INITIATED ]
[ LIFE-VITALITY LAW TRACE REGISTERED ]
I stared at the glowing blue text.
The silence in my head broke.
"I spent eight hundred years designing the resonance empathy bridge," Old Geezer said. His voice was completely flat. "It requires profound mutual vulnerability. A shared emotional frequency. It took my first host four years to reach point eight."
I know, I thought, pressing the back of my head against the stone.
"You laid in the dirt," the ancient god said. "You laid in the dirt while she talked about moss. And she bonded with you."
She asked permission, I replied silently. She didn't demand anything. She just wanted to plant things.
"That shouldn't matter."
It matters to me.
A dull heat sparked behind my sternum. It wasn't Qi. It was a faint, rhythmic pulse, like a second heartbeat completely out of sync with my own. The Life-Vitality Law. It was weak—barely a trace—but the moment it activated, the sharpest edges of my exhaustion began to dull. The glass in my spine dissolved into a dull ache.
Footsteps echoed from the far end of the corridor. Heavy, shuffling footsteps.
I scraped my back up the granite, smoothed the silk, and trapped my hands behind my back.
Zhou Bao rounded the corner. He was carrying his broom, holding it with both hands like a club. He saw me standing in the shadows and froze.
"Master," Zhou Bao said. The word cracked in the middle. He looked at my face, then at the dirt still clinging to the hem of my sleeves. "Are you... what are you doing?"
I looked at him. I didn't blink.
"Meditating," I said.
Zhou Bao swallowed hard. He looked closer.
"Master... you're sweating."
"Intensely meditating," I said.
I pushed past him down the hall, keeping my eyes locked straight ahead.