Zhang Xian sat at his desk, tapping his fingers against the wood in slow, deliberate motions. One, two, three, four. Four taps, then a pause. Then four more. He frowned and changed it to five. Five taps, a pause, then five more.

  Then he changed it again. Two taps, then three. Then five, then seven. Prime numbers. Just in case reality was secretly watching and needed a reminder of how numbers were supposed to work.

  It had been two weeks since Master Jiang vanished.

  Well. Not vanished. He had called it a leave of absence. But Zhang Xian wasn’t stupid. A person who was just a teacher didn’t need to go into seclusion. Only cultivators did that.

  And yet — was Master Jiang actually a cultivator?

  The problem was, Zhang Xian should have known the answer to that. He had grown up hearing about cultivators. He had even seen one in a nearby city once when his father had taken him there, a real, proper one with robes and a sword and an air of mystical detachment. Everyone in Qinghe Town knew what cultivators looked like.

  Master Jiang looked nothing like that.

  Master Jiang liked steamed buns. He talked to people. He didn’t stand on rooftops gazing at the moon. He slumped in his chair like a tired man who had made a terrible series of life choices.

  But…

  Zhang Xian remembered the way he moved. The way his brush strokes never wavered. The way he always caught a falling teacup without looking. The way, on that one morning, when Ma Rui had thrown a pebble at Wu Liang, Master Jiang had reached out and caught it — casually, without even looking.

  But more than that, there was the way he talked.

  Cultivators spoke about the Dao. About the Heavens. About the flow of energy and the balance of yin and yang.

  Master Jiang spoke about infinity.

  And, somehow, that was even worse.

  Zhang Xian still remembered the lesson from the week before Master Jiang left. It had been one of his usual strange, spiraling lectures that started with a normal question and ended with everyone questioning their entire existence.

  Master Jiang had drawn a circle. A perfect circle. He had done it in one stroke, without a compass, without hesitation. Then he had drawn a square inside it. Then another square, but bigger, outside the circle.

  And then he’d asked them: “If I take the ratio of the inner square’s area to the outer square’s area, do you think that number is closer to one-half? Or to two-thirds?”

  They had all stared at it. Thought about it. Looked at the perfect circle, and the two squares that held it between them.

  “Half?” Zhao Qiang had said, uncertainly. “It looks like about half.”

  “Mmm.” Master Jiang had nodded, as if considering it seriously. Then he had picked up the brush again, drawn a hexagon inside the circle, then another hexagon outside.

  “What about now?”

  Zhang Xian furrowed his brows. He looked at the picture. “The two become closer?”

  “Mmm,” Master Jiang repeated.

  Then, octagons.

  On and on it went. Until finally, Zhang Xian could barely distinguish the inner and outer shapes at all.

  Somewhere in that conversation, something that Instructor Jiang called pai had entered the picture.

  Then came his paradoxes.

  Then the realisation that nothing made sense anymore.

  By the end of the class, Zhao Qiang — Zhao Qiang, who never got nervous — had a look on his face like a blacksmith who had just been told that metal was a lie.

  It had been amazing.

  And then Master Jiang had left.

  Now they were stuck with Headmaster Song.

  Headmaster Song was a perfectly good teacher. He was patient, and he explained things clearly, and he never once told them that space could be infinitely divided or that numbers misbehaved when no one was watching.

  He was normal.

  And Zhang Xian hated it.

  “What are you thinking about?” Zhao Qiang asked from his seat next to him.

  Zhang Xian scowled. “That something’s wrong.”

  Zhao Qiang didn’t even blink. “Yes.”

  That was the other thing. Since Master Jiang had left, they all knew something was wrong. They couldn’t explain it. But it was there.

  Zhang Xian tapped his fingers again against the wood. Two, three, five, seven.

  He thought about the way Master Jiang had always dodged the question of whether he was a cultivator. He thought about the way their heads hurt after his lessons, like something too big had been trying to squeeze into their minds. He thought about the empty space in his lessons now.

  “I think Master Jiang was hiding something,” he said slowly.

  Zhao Qiang gave him a flat look. “Yes.”

  Zhang Xian sighed and rested his chin on his palm. “I just don’t know what.”

  He was going to find out.

  Even if it took forever.

  -x-x-x-

  Chen Meili sat at the long wooden table, back straight, hands neatly folded in her lap. Across from her, her father sipped his tea, his expression unreadable.

  The room was quiet—too quiet. That was never a good sign.

  Her mother had already left the table, off to oversee the shop, leaving only her father, her older brother, and her. The tea had been poured. The dishes had been cleared. Which meant that soon, very soon—

  “I heard from Headmaster Song that your teacher has gone into seclusion,” her father said at last, setting his cup down with deliberate care.

  Chen Meili schooled her face into a polite expression of quiet understanding. “Yes, Father.”

  Her father nodded, as if this were expected. “He was always a strange one. Too young to be a proper scholar, too clever to be a fool.” He glanced at her over the rim of his cup. “You liked his lessons.”

  It was not a question.

  Chen Meili did not hesitate. “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  She had expected this question. Had prepared for it. And yet, she found herself struggling to form an answer that wouldn’t sound utterly ridiculous.

  Because his lessons made her think in ways she never had before. Because, unlike the other teachers, he never just explained things—he let them stumble toward the truth on their own, like merchants feeling their way through negotiations, like traders trying to guess the worth of an unfamiliar good.

  Because, against all reason, against all logic, numbers had started to feel… alive.

  But she could not say that.

  Instead, she chose something practical. “He taught us things no one else did.”

  Her father arched an eyebrow. “Such as?”

  She paused. Carefully, deliberately, she reached for the teapot and refilled his cup. “The nature of infinity.”

  Her brother, who had been silent until now, let out a quiet snort. “Infinity,” he said, unimpressed. “That’s not something a merchant needs to know.”

  Chen Meili glanced at him. “Are you certain?”

  Her brother smirked. “I’ve never had to buy an infinite number of anything.”

  “That’s because it’s impossible,” she said, keeping her tone light. “And yet, Master Jiang made us question even that.”

  Her father hummed in thought. “Go on.”

  She took a breath. “He asked us if we could divide one silver tael into two pieces, each half its value.”

  Her father nodded. “Of course.”

  “And then he asked if we could do it again. And again.” She looked at him. “How many times could we keep doing this?”

  “As many times as the silver allows.”

  “But what if it never stopped?” she asked. “What if, no matter how small the pieces became, there was always another half to split?”

  Her brother frowned. “That’s absurd. You’d be left with nothing.”

  “That’s what I said,” Chen Meili admitted. “But then he asked: if we can always divide further, does that mean we ever truly reach zero?” She met her father’s gaze. “He told us that some philosophers thought space itself could be divided infinitely. That no matter how small something seemed, it could always be halved again. And if that were true, then—”

  “Then there would be no smallest unit of trade,” her father finished, nodding in understanding.

  Her brother frowned deeper. “But that’s not how money works.”

  “No,” her father said, rubbing his thumb over the rim of his teacup. “But it is how negotiation works.”

  Chen Meili stilled.

  Her father gestured lazily toward the account books stacked beside him. “Every deal has infinite divisions. A price is not fixed—it is something that moves between two values, like a fraction that has not yet been reduced. And a skilled merchant will know that there is always another step to take before reaching an agreement.”

  Chen Meili thought of that. Of all the times she had seen her father make deals that seemed impossible, pushing and pulling at numbers as if they were alive. As if they had their own will.

  It was, in its own way, a kind of infinity.

  For a moment, she wondered if Master Jiang would have agreed.

  Her father studied her. “You have learned something useful, then.”

  She nodded, heart steady. “Yes.”

  “Good,” he said, taking another sip of tea. “Then I expect you to use it.”

  She would.

  But not just in business.

  Because the lesson she had truly taken from Master Jiang was not about trade. It was not even about numbers.

  It was about the way he made them see the world differently.

  And she had no intention of forgetting that.

  -x-x-x-

  Wu Liang lay on the roof, staring at the sky.

  It wasn’t the first time he had been up there. He liked climbing things. Climbing was fun. He liked sitting in places he wasn’t supposed to sit. It made the world look different.

  But mostly, right now, he just didn’t want to be inside.

  His father was angry again.

  Not at him, not exactly. Just at everything. At the cost of rice, at the stubbornness of their mule, at the way their neighbor always dumped water too close to their doorstep, at the fact that Wu Liang had forgotten to bring in the firewood again —

  Actually, no, that one had been at him.

  So here he was, on the roof, where it was quiet.

  The sky was big. Really, really big. It went on forever. That was what Master Jiang had said once. No matter how far you traveled, no matter how high you climbed, there was always more sky.

  That was nice.

  It was a lot better than the inside of their house, which was very small.

  He traced a shape in the air with his finger, pretending he was drawing something important.

  Master Jiang had been gone for a long time now.

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  Not completely gone — Wu Liang had seen him. A few times. Walking through town, buying food, nodding politely at people like he wasn’t secretly some kind of mystical expert who had hidden himself among them for reasons unknown.

  But he wasn’t teaching anymore.

  And that meant things were boring.

  Headmaster Song was fine. He was normal. But that was the problem.

  Master Jiang was not normal.

  And Wu Liang missed that.

  Master Jiang had told them that numbers did things. That they moved in ways that didn’t always make sense. That there were rules, but also things that didn’t follow rules, and sometimes those things were the most interesting.

  He had told them about the game with two players who always doubled the stakes, and how if you played forever, you could win infinite money, but somehow, that wasn’t actually a good deal.

  He had told them about the numbers that were there, but not there, but also very important.

  And he had told them about how no matter how many times you added a half, you could never quite reach one.

  Wu Liang liked that one the best.

  Because it felt familiar.

  That was what it was like, trying to be good. Trying to be what his father wanted.

  No matter how many times he tried, he never quite got there.

  He didn’t mean to be bad. It just… happened.

  Sometimes, things were too tempting. A jug of water left unguarded. A fence just low enough to jump over. A cart full of cabbages that was just asking to be overturned.

  …that last one had been an accident. Mostly.

  And sometimes, he just didn’t understand why things were such a big deal. Why forgetting to sweep the floor was worth getting yelled at. Why playing when he was supposed to be working was a crime.

  Why it wasn’t okay to laugh when things were serious.

  His father didn’t like it when he laughed at the wrong time.

  He didn’t like a lot of things about Wu Liang.

  Master Jiang, though — Master Jiang had never looked at him like that.

  He had never scolded him for fidgeting in class. He had never called him useless when he got distracted.

  He had just looked at him, tilted his head, and said, “That’s interesting.”

  That was all.

  And then he had made it part of the lesson.

  Wu Liang missed that.

  He sighed and flopped onto his back, letting his arms dangle over the edge of the roof. He wondered what Master Jiang was doing now.

  Probably something weird. Probably something that would make their heads hurt if he explained it.

  Wu Liang grinned a little to himself.

  Good.

  It wouldn’t be right otherwise.

  His stomach growled. Right. Dinner. He should probably go back inside before his father got even more annoyed.

  Maybe he’d bring in the firewood this time.

  Maybe.

  He swung his legs over the edge of the roof and climbed down. Tomorrow, he’d pay closer attention in class.

  Even if Master Jiang wasn’t there.

  Even if it wasn’t as fun.

  Because maybe, just maybe —

  One day, he’d understand what really it was that made numbers so interesting after all.

  -x-x-x-

  Ma Rui pressed his back against the wooden wall of the inn, holding his breath. His heart was pounding, but not from fear. No, this was excitement. The kind that made his fingers twitch and his thoughts race ahead of him.

  He was going to find out what Master Jiang was hiding.

  Lin Fen stood next to him, arms crossed, looking extremely unamused. “This is a bad idea.”

  Ma Rui grinned. “That’s what makes it a good idea.”

  She sighed. “That’s not how logic works.”

  “That’s what people say right before something interesting happens.”

  Lin Fen muttered something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like idiot, but she didn’t leave. That was the important part.

  The hallway was empty. The inn was quiet. Most people were downstairs eating or had already gone to bed.

  Which meant this was their chance.

  Ma Rui tiptoed forward and pressed his ear against Master Jiang’s door.

  Nothing.

  Then —

  A slow, thoughtful voice, just barely audible through the wood.

  Ma Rui sucked in a breath.

  Lin Fen, still standing a few steps behind him, frowned. “What is he saying?” she whispered.

  Ma Rui held up a hand. “Shh.”

  The voice was clearer now. Master Jiang wasn’t speaking to anyone. At least, not in the way normal people did. It sounded like… thinking. But out loud.

  Which was weird.

  “I cannot impose order onto chaos. That is folly,” Master Jiang muttered. “The structure must be inherent. It must emerge. But if structure exists before it is observed, then does it exist at all?”

  Ma Rui blinked.

  Lin Fen leaned in slightly. “What?”

  Master Jiang continued, oblivious to his eavesdroppers. “Infinity is not a destination. It is not a place to reach. It is the nature of motion itself. But motion implies change. And yet —” A pause. “Can change exist without an observer?”

  Ma Rui’s brain hurt a little.

  Lin Fen whispered, “Is he… pondering a Dao?”

  Ma Rui didn’t know. But it sure sounded like it.

  “I have assumed too much,” Master Jiang said, voice quiet but intense. “Numbers do not create reality. They constrain it. And constraints define possibility. But what if —”

  He stopped.

  The silence stretched.

  Ma Rui held his breath.

  Then, very softly, Master Jiang said, “What if everything I know is wrong?”

  A chill ran down Ma Rui’s spine.

  Because that was not something a normal person said. That was something a person said right before discovering something dangerous.

  Or worse.

  Something that made things stop making sense.

  Lin Fen tugged at his sleeve. “We should go.”

  Ma Rui nodded quickly.

  They tiptoed away, moving as quietly as possible, slipping back down the hall and out of the inn before Master Jiang could realise they had been there.

  Once they were outside, standing in the dim lantern light of the street, Ma Rui turned to Lin Fen.

  “What did we just hear?” he asked.

  Lin Fen crossed her arms. “Something we shouldn’t have.”

  He nodded. “Yeah.”

  A pause.

  Then, because he couldn’t help himself —

  “…but what if change can’t exist without an observer?”

  Lin Fen groaned.

  Ma Rui grinned.

  They had no idea what Master Jiang was doing, but it was definitely something weird.

  And that meant they had to keep watching.

  -x-x-x-

  Zhao Qiang sat on the worn wooden bench in the courtyard, arms crossed, watching as the others argued.

  “He left at night,” Zhang Xian said, pacing back and forth like a detective in one of those old stories. “Then he came back. And no one has seen him since.”

  Chen Meili, seated primly beside him, let out an exasperated sigh. “He’s probably just studying.”

  “Studying what?” Wu Liang leaned forward, grinning. “The forbidden arts?”

  Ma Rui waved his hands dramatically. “Maybe he discovered a lost technique and now he’s trying to unlock the secrets of the universe!”

  Lin Fen, who had been silent so far, adjusted her sleeves and said, “Or, he’s just doing math.”

  Everyone turned to Zhao Qiang.

  He blinked. “…What?”

  “You talked to him,” Ru Lan said quietly. “What did he say?”

  Zhao Qiang frowned. He had, in fact, talked to Master Jiang. But it hadn’t been anything special.

  “He asked how our lessons were with Headmaster Song,” he said simply.

  Zhang Xian stopped pacing. “That’s it?”

  Zhao Qiang nodded.

  Wu Liang leaned in, grinning. “Did he seem… different?”

  “He seemed like Master Jiang.”

  “That means different,” Ma Rui declared.

  Zhao Qiang thought back to their conversation. To how Master Jiang had asked about their lessons, how he had sighed when Zhao Qiang said they were more boring now. How he had looked at him — not as a teacher, not even as a grown-up, but like he was actually listening.

  And then, right before he had left, he had said something strange.

  He hadn’t thought about it much at the time, but now, with everyone staring at him, waiting for answers —

  He hesitated.

  “…He said something weird,” Zhao Qiang admitted.

  Wu Liang practically bounced in place. “What? What did he say?”

  Zhao Qiang frowned. “He said… maybe I’ve been thinking about this the wrong way.”

  A pause.

  Zhang Xian narrowed his eyes. “Thinking about what the wrong way?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Lin Fen crossed her arms. “That’s not very helpful.”

  “It’s not my fault he talks like that.”

  Ma Rui rubbed his chin, looking entirely too pleased. “See? This proves it.”

  “Proves what?” Zhao Qiang asked.

  “That he’s not just a scholar,” Ma Rui said. “He’s definitely a cultivator. He’s in seclusion because he’s —” he paused for dramatic effect “— having a breakthrough.”

  Chen Meili rolled her eyes. “Or, he’s thinking about a new lesson.”

  Ru Lan, who had been quietly listening, spoke up. “People do say he hasn’t come out of his room since.”

  “Exactly!” Ma Rui pointed at her like she had just solved a great mystery. “He’s in the middle of some deep revelation. We have to figure out what it is.”

  Wu Liang gasped. “What if he’s going to ascend?”

  Lin Fen sighed. “Please stop.”

  Zhang Xian ignored them, looking back at Zhao Qiang. “When he said he was thinking about it the wrong way, did he seem upset?”

  Zhao Qiang considered that.

  “…No,” he said. “Not upset. Just… like he was trying to figure something out.”

  Chen Meili hummed. “Then we don’t need to worry. If it was something bad, he wouldn’t have been thinking about it out loud.”

  Zhao Qiang didn’t know if that was true.

  Master Jiang always thought out loud.

  Still, he didn’t seem like he was in trouble. Just distracted. Lost in thought.

  Which meant —

  “He’ll come back when he’s ready,” Zhao Qiang said firmly.

  The others looked at him.

  Zhang Xian exhaled. “Fine. But we still need to keep an eye on him.”

  Ma Rui grinned. “Agreed.”

  Lin Fen looked exhausted. “This is ridiculous.”

  Wu Liang nudged Zhao Qiang. “Next time you see him, ask if he’s unlocked the heavens yet.”

  Zhao Qiang sighed.

  Master Jiang was definitely doing something weird.

  But, whatever it was, he’d find out soon enough.

  -x-x-x-

  Ru Lan held her sister’s hand as they walked through the market street, the scent of roasting chestnuts and fresh scallion pancakes filling the air. The town square was lively, filled with vendors shouting their prices and children darting between carts, laughing. It was one of those rare days where the entire family could spend time together — well, almost the entire family. Her older brothers were still in Longtiao City, unable to return. Work, they had said. Business, their father had explained.

  Ru Lan didn’t know what kind of business kept someone away for months, but she nodded anyway.

  Her sister, Ru Mei, was haggling with a vendor over the price of silk ribbons. Her husband, Qiao Yuan, was standing beside her, arms crossed, doing his best to look intimidating. It was not working. The vendor, an elderly woman with sharp eyes and sharper words, simply waved him off.

  Ru Mei turned to Ru Lan with a smile. “What do you think? The blue one or the red one?”

  Ru Lan tilted her head, considering. “The blue one.”

  Her sister nodded, satisfied, before returning to the argument.

  Ru Lan let her eyes wander across the market. She wasn’t really paying attention to what the vendors were selling. Instead, she watched the way people moved, how the crowd shifted like water. She counted the number of steps people took before changing direction, trying to find a pattern.

  Patterns were everywhere. That’s what Master Jiang had said.

  She thought about his lessons. About how numbers weren’t just numbers, but something bigger. Before, arithmetic had been confusing, impossible — like a wall she couldn’t climb. But now, it was different. Now, she could take a big problem and break it into smaller pieces. She could see the way things fit together.

  It wasn’t just about numbers anymore. It was about how to see the world.

  She wondered if Master Jiang would ever come back.

  People still saw him, sometimes. Buying food, walking through town, always looking distracted, like his mind was somewhere far away. But it had gotten worse, recently. He didn’t talk to them. Didn’t even seem to notice when his students tried to catch his attention.

  It had been four months. Ru Lan wanted to believe he would return, but the longer it went on, the more it felt like he never would.

  “Ru Lan, look at this!” Ru Mei called, pulling her from her thoughts.

  She turned to see her sister holding up a delicate silver hairpin shaped like a plum blossom. It was beautiful.

  “I think you should get it,” Ru Lan said.

  Ru Mei beamed. “Then I will.”

  They moved on to another stall, chatting about nothing in particular. It was a good day. The kind of day where nothing bad was supposed to happen.

  But then, everything changed.

  The shift in the market was subtle at first. A murmur. A hesitation. Then a stillness, like a thread pulling too tight.

  Ru Lan didn’t notice immediately, but she felt it. A strange tension, like the air had thickened. Her mother’s grip on her wrist tightened slightly.

  Then she saw him.

  A man in fine robes, dark green with silver embroidery. The crest on his sleeve was unfamiliar to her, but the way people reacted made her stomach twist.

  A cultivator.

  He walked through the market like he owned it. Not with arrogance — no, it was worse than that. It was the kind of confidence that came from knowing no one would dare stop him.

  No one could stop him.

  And then, he looked at Ru Mei.

  His lips curled into a smirk.

  Ru Lan’s breath caught in her throat.

  Her sister, oblivious, was still examining a set of earrings, talking to her husband. She hadn’t noticed. But everyone else had.

  The vendor stopped talking. The people near them subtly stepped away. Her mother’s fingers tightened even more.

  Ru Lan knew, instinctively, that this was wrong.

  That this was dangerous.

  She had never seen this man before, but she had heard enough stories. Cultivators from the city did not come to Qinghe Town unless they had a reason. And when they wanted something, no one could say no.

  And he was walking toward her sister.

  Qiao Yuan must have sensed it too, because he moved slightly, stepping closer to Ru Mei. His jaw was clenched. But there was hesitation in his stance. Because what could he do?

  A commoner, standing against a cultivator?

  The clan emblem on the man’s sleeve finally registered in Ru Lan’s mind.

  Liu Clan. From Longtiao City.

  She had heard the name before. She had heard people whisper about them, about how they owned a third of the city, about how they got whatever they wanted.

  And no one stopped them.

  The cultivator stopped in front of Ru Mei. He tilted his head, studying her, his smirk widening. “You’re quite lovely,” he said, his tone too smooth. “What is your name?”

  Ru Mei stiffened. She had noticed now.

  Qiao Yuan’s hand clenched into a fist. “She’s married,” he said.

  The cultivator didn’t even look at him.

  Ru Mei forced a polite smile. “Thank you for your kind words, honored cultivator, but we were just leaving.”

  She moved to step away.

  He reached out.

  Her mother inhaled sharply.

  Ru Lan felt her stomach drop.

  No one spoke. No one moved.

  Because no one could. This was a cultivator. A member of the Liu Clan.

  And if they angered him, it wouldn’t just be her sister who suffered.

  It would be all of them.

  Ru Lan felt her breath quicken. She wanted to do something, but what could she do?

  Her mind raced, grasping for an answer.

  A problem too big to solve.

  Break it down.

  She couldn’t fight him. She couldn’t stop him. She couldn’t make him leave.

  But —

  She could run.

  Her feet moved before her mind fully caught up.

  She turned and sprinted, pushing through the crowd, barely hearing her mother’s startled gasp.

  She didn’t know where she was going at first, only that she had to find someone.

  Someone who might — who could — do something.

  Master Jiang.

  The thought hit her like a lightning strike.

  She didn’t know if he would help. Didn’t know if he could help.

  But she knew this —

  Master Jiang was not normal.

  And he was the only one in Qinghe Town who might be able to stop this.

  She ran faster.