One Mark For Sunrise

The results were obvious. Each spike bit deeper into the stone face, cutting more cleanly. Less crumbling. Less loss of shape. The embedded fragments gave the tips more weight, more bite. They didn't shear off or deform as easily, and they wore down slower.

He didn't have to cycle new formations as often now. With fewer rotations and sharper efficiency, progress came faster. The sand was doing more with less, and he didn't have to burn quite as much energy to keep it moving.

It wasn't true dual-material control—he wasn't fusing the elements or manipulating the stone directly.

Could've saved myself hours…

He'd been working nonstop since the discovery, carving into the base of the low, wide outcrop.

The cave he shaped wasn't large. Enough to sit upright, take a few steps, and lie flat without curling into himself. He had room to store his essentials with space left over to move around if needed. The walls were kept intentionally uneven. The ceiling remained low to make entry difficult for anyone taller than him. No cultivator enjoyed crawling into unknown terrain. Especially in a place where traps might be waiting.

The main entrance—if it could be called that—was a narrow cut beneath an overhanging ledge. Easy to miss if you weren't looking directly at it. From outside, it looked like nothing but a jagged shadow between stone roots.

He reinforced the tunnel edge with packed bone sand, creating a subtle seal that could collapse inward if disturbed. A simple trap.

Further inside, a hidden second exit was drilled. Not fully open—yet. Just a tunnel angled upwards, barely large enough to squeeze through. If he needed to bolt, or if the front became compromised, he'd have options.

As he carved out the last segment, sweat drying on his back, Li Wei gave the interior a long glance.

Nothing polished or symmetrical to catch the eye. If someone stumbled in here without knowing what they were looking for, they would not find anything.

Li Wei crouched at the back of the freshly dug shelter, brushing residual dust off his hands. The space was cramped but dry, reinforced, and hidden from all sides. With the stone-embedded bone sand now known to him, and a defensible structure established, he finally allowed himself a breath.

He reached into his storage pouch.

The first item to materialise was a clean, cloth-wrapped bundle. Then a second. Both touched down with a dull thump, sending a trace of dust into the air.

Two full mortal skeletons. No damage to the structure or marrow lines.

Li Wei unwrapped them slowly. One was tall—broad-limbed, long-fingered. The other much shorter, compact, with thinner bones that had fused early. A child or a particularly small adult, it was hard to tell. He didn't care.

He sat cross-legged, muttering the chant under his breath.

Qi flowed.

The bones clicked.

It started small—subtle movements, joints tightening. Then fingers curled. Skulls shifted. The tall one rose first, ribcage expanding slightly as airless force moved through it. Then the smaller one. Both stood upright, unmoving, eyes blank.

Two bone slaves.

He checked the joint responsiveness with a few gestures and confirmed their reactions. Both functional.

A tall one and a midget.

Li Wei didn't waste time.

With the bone slaves fully animated, he set them to work immediately. No need to name them or speak. His intent guided their actions.

The taller one began clearing the chamber—scooping up loose stone fragments and powdered dust from the drilling, piling it neatly by the entrance. The shorter one moved with quicker, sharper motions, gathering the debris and slipping outside in short bursts to scatter it discreetly into the undergrowth. No obvious trail was left behind.

Li Wei reached into his storage pouch and materialised his bed mat—plain woven fibre, rolled tight—and passed it to the short one, who unrolled it across the flattest part of the chamber without needing further instruction. Next came the water gourds, a spare set of robes, and a wrapped bundle of dried rations. One gourd by the wall. Food beneath a stone lip, tucked from casual sight.

The cave began to shift from temporary to functional.

When Li Wei tried sending the two bone slaves outside, he ran into an unexpected issue.

The tall one approached the entrance, ducked slightly… and smacked its skull against the top of the crawl tunnel with a hollow clunk.

It froze.

Li Wei blinked. Then let out a short breath through his nose.

He wasn't even upset when the taller one failed to squeeze through the crawlspace. It just stood there, blank-skulled and motionless, shoulders hunched beneath the stone ceiling like a confused ox at a barn door.

Li Wei snorted quietly.

One tall. One short. Looked like a skeleton father and his skeletal gremlin child. A mismatched set if there ever was one.

"Well," he muttered, "guess I've got a housekeeper."

The shorter bone slave slipped through the exit without issue, obediently vanishing into the underbrush with a wave of Li Wei's hand. That one would handle outside duties—fetching ash, keeping the perimeter clean, moving supplies if needed. The tall one stayed inside. Cleaning, maintenance, maybe a few drills for simple defence routines.

Li Wei scratched his chin, mildly amused. "At least one of you is fit for purpose."

Under the low ceiling of his stone-carved shelter, Li Wei emptied the storage pouch with methodical care.

The essentials came first—Refined Beast Bone Shards, Barbed Recoil Snares, the two Foundation Establishment Elixirs. Then came smaller items: a flask of Ashvine Root Extract, the sealed pot of Black Serpent Venom, and finally, the pair of Intrusion Talismans.

He arranged them on the stone beside his bed mat, each one placed within easy reach. A simple glance confirmed everything was accounted for. His supplies were laid out, his shelter secure.

The smaller bone slave crawled through the low tunnel entrance as Li Wei watched from inside. In its hand, it carried the Intrusion Talisman. With a few silent gestures from Li Wei, it placed one just within the entrance tunnel, angled toward the path, and the second further back—where any intruder would be forced to crawl or crouch. Both would trigger silently if disturbed.

Next came the traps.

Following Li Wei's direction, the bone slave moved out into the forest. It began placing the Barbed Recoil Snares—low to the ground, just beyond the slope leading up to the cave. Li Wei had chosen the locations earlier: under a cluster of pine needles, behind a slanted root, near a decaying log. Places that wouldn't see casual traffic but might catch someone trailing too close.

Then came the Beast Bone Shards. The slave dotted them around the broader approach paths—wedged into mossy patches or covered lightly with fallen leaves. Not too close to the cave itself; Li Wei didn't want it obvious where the centre of his territory was. The goal was disruption, not a trail to follow.

After a while, Li Wei crawled out and checked the placement himself.

Decent. Nothing glaring. Still, he knelt by each one, brushing more debris over them for concealment. One shard had been left too obvious—the bone slave stood directly above it, looking blankly downward like it had just given birth to the thing.

Li Wei blinked once. "You look like a retard."

With a sigh, he crouched and went to work.

One by one, he uncorked the pot of Black Serpent Venom and dipped the sharpened shards. The liquid clung to the bone with a faint oily sheen, soaking in fast. When dry, it was invisible.

By the time he'd finished, he straightened, dusted his hands.

This place was going to be a real pain in the ass for anyone who came sniffing.

Li Wei crouched at the cave entrance, squinting out into the treeline, then turned and crawled back inside.

"Well… what the fuck now," he muttered to himself.

No one had said much about what to do once the Reaping began. But the few warnings he'd heard pointed to one strategy for the first year: wait. Survive. Let the others die first.

Sounded good to him.

Inside, the air was cool and still. He took out a pouch of fine bone ash and began spreading it across the chamber floor—thinner than last time, but enough for what he needed. The soft layer coated the packed dirt like dust on a long-abandoned tomb.

He sat cross-legged, hands resting on his knees, and slipped into the breathing rhythm of the Desert Soul Technique. The pattern was already etched into his muscle memory—inhale to sink, exhale to draw, pull the stillness into the bones.

But this time… something changed.

Barely seconds in, the Qi response shifted. Stronger. Sharper. More concentrated.

Li Wei's eyes opened slightly.

No longer was he straining for scraps of residual death Qi like before—here, the spiritual essence saturated the ground. Faint, but present. Everywhere.

He steadied his breath again and closed his eyes.

There are definitely bones here. Dozens. Maybe more.

Not fresh corpses—old ones. Bones of cultivators who hadn't made it through previous Reapings. Crushed, buried, forgotten. Their remains had long since become one with the forest floor.

Li Wei leaned back against the stone wall, settling into the small alcove he'd shaped with his own hands. It wasn't luxurious, but it was secure—bone-reinforced, low-ceilinged, and insulated by packed earth and stone. Just large enough for a single person to live and think without feeling boxed in.

He kept the Desert Soul Technique running at a slow, background pace—drawing in faint traces of residual Qi from the surrounding earth, but mostly just... sitting. Resting.

No one had come near. The place was quiet. And that was good.

The smaller bone slave had been sent out hours earlier. Li Wei had no intention of personally trudging around unless he had to. He'd given it instructions to scout the immediate perimeter—note elevation shifts, sources of water, blind spots, any signs of traffic.

It was crude mapping, but functional.

He found that if he didn't need it, the thing could just be left crouched behind a tree or buried under some brush. Completely still, barely visible. He had a signal pattern worked out too—three taps with his bone sense and it would return.

It had already charted a rough radius of maybe four hundred paces in every direction. The major approach routes were easy to mark—animal trails, slight depressions in the terrain, breaks in the moss. His location was off any main travel line, which reassured him.

The larger bone slave, too big to leave, had become a sort of house servant. Li Wei had it sweep out ash when needed, repack dirt at the entrance, and—perhaps most importantly—keep count.

"One mark for sunrise," Li Wei had ordered, marking the wall with a small notch each time. "Repeat daily."

He needed a count. Something to measure. Something to orient time around.

Three years. Roughly a thousand days.