The encounter with Wei Tian left a sour, metallic taste in Wei Yuan's mouth that had nothing to do with fear. It was the taste of violation. The Artist had acted without his permission, a guard dog lunging from the cage of his consciousness, and the psychic backlash was a vicious reminder of who held the leash. The Loom's condemnation—[Discord detected.]—was a clear sign that this reactive, defensive power offered no path to healing. It was a weapon that wounded the wielder as much as the target.
He retreated into the dusty solitude of the Pavilion, his paranoia now honed to a razor's edge. He was living with a predator, and he needed to understand the nature of the beast. The Artist wasn't just a collection of skills; it was a repository of knowledge. Of intent. It had studied the "Raging River Style," a name that now echoed in his mind with a new, sinister weight.
His investigation had to evolve. He'd found the what—a blood ritual fueled by a sacrificed ghost. He had a theory about the why—to break the clan's ancestral curse. Now, he needed the how. He needed to find the Artist's library.
The annotations were a start, but they were reactive, a commentary. The Artist must have had his own sources, his own heretical scriptures. And like his annotations, Wei Yuan suspected they would be hidden in plain sight.
He began a new, more focused search. Not on the neatly cataloged shelves of the main floor. The Artist was too careful, too meticulous for that. Wei Yuan's instincts—a strange blend of his own cautious logic and a faint, cold echo of the Artist's cunning—drew him downwards. To the lower archives.
A place no one ever went. A cramped, damp cellar accessible by a heavy trapdoor hidden beneath a worn rug. The air that hit him as he lifted it was thick with the smell of mildew and time itself, a place where forgotten histories were left to rot. The perfect hiding place.
Wei Yuan lit a tallow candle, the small flame casting long, dancing shadows that made the cramped space feel alive, menacing. Discarded scrolls, water-damaged bamboo slips, and worm-eaten books were tossed into haphazard piles. The clan's memory hole.
He started his search, the methodical process a welcome distraction from the fear coiling in his gut. Hours passed. His fingers grew numb from the chill, his robes gathering a fine layer of grime. He examined each scroll, each slip, looking for a ghost in a mountain of paper.
Nothing. Just mold and decay. Records of failed businesses. Genealogies of dead branch families. Embarrassing poems by a lovesick elder. A testament to the clan's vanity, a curated collection of everything they wished to forget.
Frustration began to set in, a hot, tight feeling in his chest. Was I wrong? He was about to give up when his candle flame flickered over a pile of scrolls in the far corner.
They were different.
While the others were bound with simple twine, these were bound with thin, black leather cords. And they were not covered in dust. Someone had been here. Recently.
His heart began to hammer a heavy, painful rhythm. He knelt, his hands trembling as he reached for the topmost scroll. He untied the leather cord. He unrolled it.
The text was not the elegant script of the Wei Clan. It was a jagged, aggressive hand, the ink a strange, dark green. But the language… he recognized it from the annotations. An archaic, dissident dialect.
The title sent a jolt of ice through his veins: "An Inquiry into the Nature of Resonant Catalysts."
He began to read, the candle held close. It wasn't a cultivation manual. It was a treatise. A work of cold, academic alchemy. It spoke of the soul as a form of spiritual energy, a "resonant frequency." It detailed methods for trapping lingering spirits, for distilling their 怨念 (yuànniàn - deep-seated resentment and grievance) into a potent, psychically active medium.
It was a cookbook for creating a screaming ghost.
Acid crawled up Wei Yuan's throat. This was it. The foundation. The Artist hadn't invented the ritual; he had researched it. He was following a pre-existing, heretical intellectual tradition.
He unrolled the next scroll. "The Unspoken Art: A Study of Will as Weapon." This text spoke of infusing one's intent directly into an object, a glance, a single brushstroke. It described how to channel the conceptual "weight" of a raging river into a focused psychic assault that could shatter an opponent's spirit without laying a finger on them.
A perfect description of what he had done to Wei Tian.
He had found the Artist's library. A school of thought that treated the soul not as sacred, but as a resource to be exploited.
The final discovery was the most damning. Tucked at the very bottom of the pile was not a scroll, but a thin, leather-bound book. Its cover was bare, save for a single, elegantly brushed character. The Artist's own hand.
The character was 'Brush'.
Wei Yuan's fingers shook as he opened it. It was a diary. A research journal. Filled with notes, calculations, and chillingly logical arguments.
Entry 17: The Knotted Meridians are not a curse, but a lock. The First Ancestor did not cripple our branch; he quarantined it. The question is not how to heal the meridians, but how to bypass them entirely.
Entry 23: The Loom is the key. It responds not to Qi, but to Insight. To the perfect expression of an Art. The threads it weaves are not Qi; they are pure will, stitched directly into the soul. But the Loom is hungry. Simple Arts are insufficient. The ink must be… louder.
Entry 31: Have located a suitable catalyst. The spirit of the disgraced Elder Chen, who hung himself in this very pavilion eighty years ago. His resentment is strong. The histories say he was a traitor. My research suggests he was a scapegoat. His ghost still lingers, bound by its own grievance. It will be the perfect, screaming ghost.
Wei Yuan slammed the book shut, a strangled cry escaping his lips. He scrambled back, away from the pile of scrolls, away from the cold, methodical madness of his other self.
He had his answers. And they were worse than anything he could have imagined.
The Artist was not a monster born of a singular, desperate act. He was a scholar who had followed a path of forbidden knowledge to its logical, horrifying conclusion. He had identified a problem—the curse. He had found a tool—the Loom. And he had devised a solution—the sacrifice of a tormented soul to fuel a ritual powerful enough to rewrite his own destiny.
And the most terrifying part? In the cold, quiet dark of the archive, surrounded by the ghosts of heretical thought, it almost made sense.
He was no longer just an investigator. He was the inheritor of a terrible, meticulously planned legacy. And with the Branch Purge looming, he knew, with a certainty that felt like a death sentence, that he would have to pick up the tools the Artist had left behind. The path had been laid out for him, written in the ink of a screaming ghost. He had to finish the work.