For two days, Wei Yuan was a ghost. He did not leave the Pavilion of Forgotten Scrolls. The outside world, with its web of quiet accusations and potential interrogations from a father who knew too much, was a minefield he wasn't ready to cross. The Pavilion, once his prison, then a crime scene, had now become his laboratory.
He moved with a quiet, deliberate purpose that felt alien to his own body. The fear hadn't left him—it was a cold, hard knot in his stomach that tightened into a fist every time his gaze drifted to the inert iron box—but it was now tempered by a fragile, desperate resolve. The discovery of the Loom's mechanics had given him a path. A terrible, fractured path, but a path nonetheless.
His days fell into a grueling, secret rhythm.
The mornings were for the monster. He didn't dare touch a brush, not with the memory of the "screaming brush" still raw in his mind. Instead, he practiced the mundane, the forgotten arts of a scholar. The perfect folding of a sheet of paper, his fingers pressing the creases into a complex, harmonious lattice. The meticulous grinding of an inkstick, not to write, but for the Zen-like focus it demanded, the solid black dissolving into a pool of liquid shadow.
Each time, he had to let go. He had to consciously surrender to the Artist. He felt the unsettling detachment settle over him, the cold proficiency taking over his hands, his own panicked thoughts receding to a distant murmur. And each time, the Loom responded.
[A pattern is recognized.]
[Harmony achieved.]
[A THREAD IS WOVEN]
A shimmering thread—gleaming gold for the folded paper, deep black for the ground ink—would emerge and sink into his chest. And for a few precious, fleeting seconds, the grinding pain of his Knotted Meridians would recede. Relief. It was a horrifying transaction, this bartering of his own soul for a few moments of peace, inviting the monster in to pay the monster's debts. But it worked. The pain, while still a constant companion, subsided into a manageable ache instead of a blinding agony.
The clarity it bought him was crucial. Because the afternoons were for the hunt.
He couldn't risk his father. He couldn't count on Old Man Ji. The clues had to be here, somewhere in the dusty, silent confines of the Pavilion itself.
His past self, the Artist, was a scholar. A heretic, yes, but a scholar first. And scholars leave records.
Wei Yuan began his search not with the grand histories, but with the most mundane document he could find: the Pavilion's own ledger of acquisitions. It was a thick, leather-bound tome filled with years of dry, tedious entries. He sat on the cold floor, the heavy book in his lap, and began to read, his finger tracing each line of faded ink.
Three bolts of fine silk paper, for the Elder's Hall.
New inkstones, for the outer disciples.
A shipment of scrolls on the Dao of the Sword, requested by Wei Tian.
It was a slow, mind-numbing process. The air was thick with the vanilla-and-dust scent of decaying paper. The only sound was the dry rustle of turning pages. He was a ghost hunting a ghost, sifting through a mountain of paper for a single anomaly. For a trace of himself.
He focused on the last year, then the last six months, then the last three. He found his own requests. Historical texts on the early clan. Treatises on ancient formations. Biographies of the First Ancestor. All of it seemed normal—the work of a diligent, if overly intense, scholar. There was no "A Heretic's Guide to Blood Sacrifice" or "Forbidden Rituals for Dummies." The Artist had been careful. Too careful.
Frustration began to prickle at him, a hot itch under his skin. He was running out of time. The Branch Purge was less than twelve days away. This wasn't working.
He shoved the ledger aside, letting his head fall back against a shelf with a dull thud. He closed his eyes, his thoughts a chaotic swirl. Think. Stop thinking like you. Think like him. If you were the Artist, planning something this dangerous, this secret, where would you hide your research? Not in the open. Never in the open.
You would hide it in plain sight.
Wei Yuan's eyes snapped open. He looked at the rows upon rows of scrolls, thousands of them. He had been looking for a separate record, a hidden diary. What if the research wasn't separate at all? What if it was woven in?
He scrambled to his feet, a frantic energy seizing him. He went to the section on clan history and pulled out a scroll, one he vaguely remembered requesting: "A Commentary on the First Ancestor's Edicts." A dry, orthodox text, filled with pious, mind-numbing dogma.
He unrolled it on the desk. The calligraphy was the neat, impersonal work of a long-dead scribe. He scanned the familiar, sanitized history of the First Ancestor's benevolence, his peerless strength, his wisdom. He was about to roll it back up in disgust when something snagged his eye.
A tiny annotation. In the margin. Written in a faint, silvery ink that was almost invisible against the aged bamboo. It was his own handwriting. The cold, precise script of the Artist.
His heart began to pound a slow, heavy rhythm against his ribs.
The main text read: "...and the First Ancestor, in his boundless mercy, bestowed upon our bloodline the Blessing of the Adamant Soul, ensuring our lineage would forever stand strong..."
The annotation, a poison dart of a whisper from his other self, read: Boundless mercy, or gilded cage? "Adamant" is another word for "Unchanging." A soul that cannot change cannot grow. This is not a blessing. It is a seal.
A chill crawled up Wei Yuan's spine. This is it. The trail. He hadn't kept a diary. He had defaced the clan's sacred texts, turning their history into a canvas for his heresy.
One by one, he pulled out every scroll he had requisitioned, his hands moving with a new, feverish haste. He found more.
Next to a passage describing the "noble sacrifice" of the Third Branch in a forgotten war, the Artist had written: Sacrifice, or culling? Their meridians were flawed, like ours. A convenient solution. The main branch prunes its own tree.
Next to a description of the clan's "Five Elemental Harmony," a chilling query: Harmony requires balance. What was taken? What was the price?
It was a breadcrumb trail of sedition, a quiet rebellion waged in silver ink. His other self wasn't a madman. He was a historian, systematically deconstructing the foundational myths of his own clan, searching for the truth behind their "blessing." Behind his curse.
The final clue came from a scroll detailing the clan's budget from three generations ago. In the margin, next to an entry for a large purchase of "High-Grade Spirit-Guiding Ink," the Artist had made a calculation. Then, a single, terrifying annotation.
Standard ink potency: insufficient. Requires a catalyst. A resonant spiritual signature. The blood of a descendant is the key, but the will is too weak. The ink requires a ghost. A screaming ghost.
Wei Yuan dropped the scroll as if it had burned him. It clattered to the floor, unspooling in a wave of ancient paper.
A screaming ghost.
The phrase connected everything. The screaming brush. The tainted ink. The note about his own blood being too thin.
His other self hadn't just been planning a ritual. He had been planning to capture a spirit—a ghost—and grind its very essence into his ink. A soul as a catalyst.
The sheer, cold-blooded audacity of it stole the breath from Wei Yuan's lungs. The question was no longer "What kind of monster am I?" It was now something so much worse.
What monster did I create?