Jake stirred awake to the steady drip-drip-drip of rain against the shack's weathered roof, a sound that wove into the faint hum of his Gu burrowing beneath the floorboards. He lay still for a moment, eyes tracing the warped wooden beams overhead, letting the rhythm ground him. Seven weeks in the Cloudveil Sect's outer court, and he'd clawed his way to something resembling stability. The Flow Sieve Array, etched into the dirt floor, thrummed softly, its intricate loops filtering the sect's wild, erratic qi into a steady trickle that fed his Gu. In their makeshift pen—a shallow trench lined with clay—his mining Gu, each no bigger than a coin, scraped tirelessly at the earth, while the dust Gu wove tight, glowing arcs through the air, their movements stabilized by the Qi Harmony Array. It wasn't much, but it worked. For now.
A sharp rap on the door snapped him out of his reverie. His hand twitched, qi surging instinctively to the Starlight Thread formation etched into his palm—a thin, shimmering line of defense he'd devised after a late-night scare with a wandering beast. The thread flickered, then dimmed as he registered the absence of a qi spike. Just a knock. He rolled to his feet, brushing dust from his robes, and cracked the door open. Rain streaked the gray morning, and there stood the wiry disciple from the pavilion, his crooked grin cutting through the gloom. Water plastered his dark hair to his forehead, and his gray robes clung damply to his frame.
"Morning, bug guy," the disciple said, flicking a bead of water from his sleeve with exaggerated flair. "You busy?"
Jake blinked, keeping his expression flat as he stepped aside. "Depends. What's up?"
The boy sauntered in, shaking rain from his arms like a dog shedding a bath. "Name's Cai. Been meaning to swing by. You're the outer court's little enigma—whispers floating around about weird qi tricks and dirt piles." His sharp eyes darted to the floorboards, lingering where the Gu's hum pulsed faintly. "Thought I'd see what's cooking."
Jake leaned against the wall, arms crossed, projecting calm. "Not much to see. Just Gu, some formations. Keeps them digging, keeps me fed."
Cai's grin widened, a glint of skepticism in it. "Sure, sure. I saw those sketches at the pavilion, though—circles inside circles, qi lines tangled like spider silk. That's not just 'digging.' You're building something."
Jake shrugged, deflecting with practiced ease. "Tinkering, mostly. Trying to make the Gu faster, tougher. Nothing fancy."
Cai paced the cramped shack, boots tapping the floorboards, clearly unconvinced. "Tinkering, huh? You're selling ore scraps at the market—decent haul for a lone newbie. Got me wondering. What if you hit something big down there? Spirit stones? Rare metals?"
Jake allowed a faint smirk. "If I strike a vein of gold, you'll hear the celebration from the inner court. Right now? Dirt and crumbs."
Cai laughed, a short, barking sound. "Fair enough. But I'm not here just to poke around. I've got a pitch. I'm no good with formations—too fiddly—but I've got a nose for resources. Old mines, forgotten stashes, spots the sect's overlooked. You dig, I point the way, we split it fifty-fifty. What do you say?"
The offer hit Jake like a pebble dropped into still water, ripples spreading through his thoughts. More resources could mean more Gu, better ink, stronger arrays—freedom from scraping by on ore dust. But Cai's grin was too easy, his stride too casual. Trust was a luxury Jake couldn't afford, not yet. "I'll think it over," he said, voice level. "Got to test what I've got running first."
"Smart," Cai replied, rapping his knuckles on the doorframe as he turned to leave. "Don't sit on it too long—I've got other takers." He slipped back into the rain, leaving Jake with a lingering mix of suspicion and temptation.
The door clicked shut, and Jake exhaled, letting the silence settle. Cai's words gnawed at him as he knelt by the floorboards, prying one loose with a creak. The Gu pen came into view: mining Gu hauling tiny clods of earth, dust Gu tracing luminous patterns, and a clutch of spares hardening in their clay nook. The Flow Sieve Array glowed faintly beneath, its qi channels smooth and steady. Ore sales kept him afloat—barely—but Cai was right about one thing: hitting something valuable could change everything. Partnership, though? That was a gamble. He shoved the thought aside. Focus on the now.
He pulled his sketchbook from a shelf—a battered thing, edges curling, stuffed with notes and diagrams. The latest page showed his interface: a spiral knot of Formation Integration, linking clock, notepad, light, sleep, climate, and Gu control. Last night, he'd tested it, freezing a mining Gu mid-scrape with a single qi pulse—real-time control, seamless. Now he needed data. How much were they digging? How long could they last? He flipped through Advanced Qi Flow, his go-to text, until he hit Resonance Mapping. The technique promised to bounce a Gu's qi signature back to him—health, fatigue, even their haul. Perfect.
He traced the runes into the Harmony Array, qi threading through his fingers like silk. The air hummed, a low vibration blooming in his skull: sixty-seven dust Gu, buzzing strong; twelve mining Gu, steady but fraying at the edges. He frowned, noting the strain. They'd need rest soon—or better qi flow. He was tweaking the Flow Sieve to compensate when the air shifted—thick, heavy, electric, like a storm trapped in the shack. The Gu pen rattled, mining Gu slamming into the trench walls, dust Gu scattering in frantic loops. Jake's heart leapt. Not a spike—this was deeper, a rolling pulse rippling through the sect's ley lines.
He lunged for the door, shoving it open. Rain lashed his face as he peered out. Beyond the outer court, the sect's peaks shimmered with wild qi, tendrils swirling in the gray sky. Distant shouts echoed—disciples scrambling, elders barking commands. A breakthrough? A beast stirring the ley lines? Whatever it was, his Gu were caught in the backlash. He spun back, sketching a Qi Anchor Ward from memory—Defensive Arrays, page forty-two. He slapped it over the pen, qi flaring as the ward snapped into place. The Gu calmed, their thrashing easing, but cracks spidered through the ward's lines within seconds. Too flimsy. Gritting his teeth, he adjusted the Flow Sieve, venting excess qi like steam through a cracked pipe. The shack groaned, the air steadied, and dawn broke gray as the pulse faded. The Gu were safe—but the flaw glared at him: his arrays could react, not anticipate.
He sank onto a stool, rain drumming overhead, mind racing. Stability wasn't enough. He needed prediction, a way to see the next pulse coming. The Flow Sieve kept things running, but it was a bandage, not a shield. His gaze drifted to the sketchbook, then to the stack of texts he'd bartered for at the market. No answers there—not yet. He needed the scriptorium.
Mid-morning found him trudging through the mud, robes soaked, the stone bulk of the scriptorium rising behind the Scripture Pavilion. Inside, the air smelled of ink and old paper, shelves groaning under scrolls and jade slips. The attendant—a gaunt woman with ink-stained fingers and a sharper tongue—barely glanced up. "Stabilization formations," he said, keeping it vague. She pointed him to a corner, muttering about impatient novices.
He scanned the shelves, fingers brushing titles. Qi Stabilization Arrays caught his eye—earth-rooted runes to dampen surges. He tucked it under his arm, then grabbed Harmonic Resonance Wards, a text on syncing qi flows to smooth disruptions. Solid finds, but not enough. Then a jade slip glinted in the dim light: Basic Qi Movement Divination. He pressed qi into it, and characters flared in his mind—ley line tracking, flow interpretation, pressure shifts. Not fortune-telling nonsense, but raw data, patterns he could use. His breath caught. This wasn't just stabilization—it was foresight.
Back at the shack, he spread his haul on the floor, rain a steady murmur outside. First, he wove Stabilization Arrays into the Flow Sieve, grounding its qi deeper into the earth; the hum steadied, less brittle. Then Resonance Wards into the Harmony Array, syncing the Gu's rhythms until their buzz felt like a heartbeat. He tested it—mining Gu scraped with renewed vigor, dust Gu pulsed crisp and clear. Good. Now the Divination slip. Its runes spoke of ley resonance and flow shifts, but it was basic, skeletal. No weather spells, no pre-made maps—just a framework. An idea sparked.
He'd read about qi moving like wind in the sect's valleys, shifting with storms and seasons. What if he could track that? Predict it? The Divination slip didn't hand him a solution, but it lit the path. He grabbed charcoal and sketched, reasoning it out. Ley lines carried qi; weather bent them—rain thickened flows, wind scattered them. If he could measure those shifts, map them against the sect's terrain, he'd have a weather formation. Original, his own. He paired the slip's runes with scraps of knowledge—Sect Topographic Maps for layout, Feng Shui Basics for flow principles—and built a Qi Weather Array. Qi pulsed through it, and a faint image shimmered in his mind: sect peaks, glowing ley lines, a gray smudge of storm rolling in. Rough, blurry, but real.
The effort drained him. Ley shifts, pressure changes, Gu data—it piled up, his focus buckling under the load. The weather map flickered, edges dissolving. He needed to offload the math—those calculations of flow rates and pressure drops were bogging him down. Digging through his notes, he found Qi Computation Methods, a dry text on using qi as logic: addition, subtraction, even crude gates. A calculator, formation-style. He sketched a Qi Calculator Array, standalone, no ties to the weather or Gu arrays yet. He tested it: two plus three. Qi flowed through the runes, slow but steady—five. Encouraged, he fed it the weather array's raw data—ley intensities, shift speeds. The map snapped into focus, the storm pinned to an hour out. His chest loosened. This calculator wasn't part of a system—not yet. It was a tool, separate, like a hammer beside a saw. But one day, he'd forge them into one.
Dusk settled, the shack glowing faintly with active formations. The Qi Weather Array hummed on its own, tracking the storm—standalone, original, born from that divination slip and his own grit. The Qi Calculator Array sat apart, crunching numbers when he fed it, a quiet triumph. The Flow Sieve and Harmony Array kept the Gu steady, their hum a lifeline. Jake leaned back, rain tapping the roof, Cai's offer circling his thoughts. Resources versus risk. He'd weigh it later. For now, he had tools—weather, numbers, control—and a vision of something bigger, a system to tie it all together. Sleep tugged at him, the Gu's hum a lullaby, echoes of his work resonating in the sieve.