Rotten Roots

The Outer Sect Testing Grounds lay east of the disciples' dormitories, where the mist thinned just enough to let sunlight dapple through the high pines. A circle of polished quartz stones had been inlaid centuries ago into the mountainside, forming a ritual floor that whispered faintly with stored echoes of past revelations.

At the center stood the Pillars of Essence — five obelisks of spirit-veined stone, each carved with one of the five elemental glyphs. When touched by a disciple's palm, a spiritual pulse would awaken the latent root within their body and glow accordingly: green for wood, red for fire, silver for metal, blue for water, brown for earth.

Sometimes — rarely — there were other hues. A storm-flash of yellow-white. A ripple of violet shadow. Once, a girl's stone bled.

Today, the courtyard was full of tension and cold breath.

Disciples stood in loose rows, whispering between turns, sleeves stiff with starch and fear. The elders sat in half-circle formation on elevated stones, each wearing an expression carved from the same quarry as the mountain.

"Lin Ziqian," one of them called, voice like flint on ice.

A girl in pale robes stepped forward. She bowed low, calm despite the hush, and placed her hand on the nearest pillar.

A blue flare rose — smooth and cold as mountain springwater.

"Water root," murmured one elder. "Average depth. High stability."

The girl bowed again, glanced once toward the edge of the crowd — where no one stood — and returned to her place.

More names followed. Red flames for fire roots. Sharp, silver gleams for metal. Each time, the elders took notes. Some nodded. A few whispered to each other.

Then a pause.

Then: "Li Wei Chen."

The silence was immediate. Disciples glanced around.

No one stepped forward.

One of the elders sighed audibly. Another checked his wrist talisman, as if timing the joke.

A beat later, a soft crunching could be heard. Not the sound of feet. The sound of something being eaten.

From behind a copse of juniper trees near the perimeter, Li Wei Chen emerged slowly, chewing on a steamed pork bun with the placid calm of a fisherman mid-dream.

His robe was crooked. His sash undone. His hair had been combed by wind and sleep in equal measure.

"Apologies," he said, mid-chew. "I thought this was tomorrow."

A disciple snorted. Another covered a smile.

Elder Yan's mouth drew into a perfect horizontal line.

Wei Chen stopped before the stone. Looked at it as one might regard a gate with no door.

He raised his free hand and placed it flat on the pillar.

For a moment — nothing.

Then the stone flickered. Not bright. Not colored.

Black.

A darkness bloomed from the point of contact like oil in water. It spread down, pooling at the base, and with a low crrrrk, a hairline crack formed across the lower third.

No light. No color. No pulse.

A silence deeper than the one before.

"Void Root," someone whispered.

"Impossible," another murmured.

The elders leaned forward. One's lip curled. Another's brow twitched.

A low voice near the rear said, "He broke the damn stone."

Laughter came — scattered, hesitant. But beneath it ran something else: unease.

Wei Chen examined his hand. Then the stone. Then the crack. "Was it always like this?"

The pillar gave a faint groan.

Elder Qiu hissed through his teeth. "Remove your hand. Now."

Wei Chen did. The crack stopped growing, but the black remained — a smear of silence in the center of the test.

Someone said, "Is that cursed?"

Another, "No spiritual root. Like… none at all."

"Bad karma."

"Rotten fate."

The murmurs rose like steam over boiling broth.

Wei Chen scratched his head. "So… do I get a ribbon or…"

The stone split slightly deeper at the base.

No one laughed.

Only Lin Ziqian, back in the crowd, did not speak. Her eyes were locked on the pillar. And the faint, almost imperceptible trail of plum blossom pollen that had settled on Wei Chen's shoulder.

By the time the next disciple stepped forward, the crack in the testing stone had gone dull, like an old scar.

No one touched it again.

"Next," Elder Yan snapped.

But the laughter hadn't stopped. It had only changed tones.

"Void Root," muttered a boy with crooked teeth. "That's worse than trash."

"His spirit channels must be reversed."

"Maybe he's a failed reincarnation."

"Maybe he isn't reincarnated."

They spoke in half-mockery, half-prayer. When fear mixes with familiarity, it breeds superstition like mold on rice.

A disciple threw a pebble in Wei Chen's direction. It missed and landed near his foot.

Wei Chen didn't notice. Or pretended not to. He picked at the last of the steamed bun stuck in his teeth and turned to walk off.

Elder Qiu stood before him.

"You've wasted our time, damaged sacred ground, and embarrassed your rank. Do you think this is a joke?"

Wei Chen blinked. "Is that a test question?"

Qiu's nostrils flared.

Another elder spat off the side of the dais. "I told you. Should've thrown him out three years ago. Or sealed him."

"You can't seal what's already hollow," said someone else.

"His presence attracts imbalance."

"Maybe he attracts thunder beasts."

Wei Chen glanced back toward the pillar, still faintly smudged with blackness. "It didn't seem to like me."

"You shouldn't be here at all," Qiu growled. "Spiritual cultivation is a ladder. Not a hole."

"I'm good with ladders," Wei Chen said mildly. "I once fell off three in one day."

Disciples laughed again. But the tone was bitter now. Uneasy.

Yan stepped forward, voice sharp as slate.

"Effective immediately, outer disciple Li Wei Chen is reassigned to hazard-cleansing duties."

A murmur went through the group.

"No…"

"That's the rift assignment."

"You're sending him there?"

"To the Samsara Cliff?"

Even Wei Chen blinked. "You want me to clean mist?"

"You'll cleanse the area around the Rift's edge. Old rubble, beast bones, spirit residue. No one else will go there."

"They say even the insects avoid it," someone whispered.

"They say ghosts don't."

Yan ignored the crowd.

"You'll start today," he said. "Alone."

Wei Chen considered this. "Can I at least keep the broom this time?"

"No jokes."

"Noted."

In the corner of the clearing, Lin Ziqian remained silent.

She hadn't moved since her test. Her eyes followed Wei Chen as he bowed—half-heartedly—to the elders, turned, and strolled away from the testing circle like a man leaving a boring opera.

As he passed her, she spoke without looking at him.

"You touched the stone. But it didn't touch you."

Wei Chen paused. "That's true."

"Do you know what that means?"

"No," he said, "but it sounds poetic."

And then he kept walking.

Behind him, the testing pillar gave a soft, almost imperceptible click — a sliver of new crack splitting off to the left, like a hairline fracture in fate.

The Stone Archive was built in silence.

Even wind did not enter. The sound-sealing sigils etched across the cedar beams pulsed with quiet light, old and patient as buried bones. Incense curled in threads no thicker than memory. Paper lanterns gave off a silver-blue glow, like the breath of snow foxes.

Five elders sat in a ring around a bone-inlaid table. No crowd. No disciples. Just the crackle of tea cooling in untouched cups and the occasional pop of an oil lamp running low.

Elder Yan broke the silence first.

"Void Root."

The words hovered in the air like mold on steamed rice.

Elder Qiu scowled. "A cracked stone, no light, and a disciple who yawns through questioning. If this were any other sect, he'd be drowned."

"Not drowned," corrected the bald elder from the south range. "Fed to dogs."

"His spirit threads are wrong," said Qiu. "They don't respond to pressure. Don't echo or reflect. It's not stagnation. It's… absence."

"That's impossible. Even insects have karma."

A pause.

Then: "Unless it's inverted."

"Inverted?"

"A root that consumes fate instead of responding to it."

The idea sat heavy in the room.

From behind a bamboo screen, half-hidden in the scroll alcove, Old Man Ru Mo sipped his tea.

His eyes were rheumy but far from blind.

He didn't speak yet. Just listened. One of his hands absently traced a ring-shaped scar on his thumb—the mark of an old sealing ritual, long disbanded.

Another elder leaned forward. "Could he have been altered in the womb?"

"No mother would bear that."

"A karmic wound?"

"Too clean. No echoes. No scent of death."

Qiu rubbed his temple. "If it's possession, we'd see a split in dream memory."

"Unless the mask has no seams."

That quieted them again.

Someone finally dared say what they'd all tiptoed around.

"The last Void Root awakened the Tomb Mandala."

Yan's lips curled. "And died before his bones cooled."

"Maybe this one won't be so lucky."

Ru Mo finally spoke. His voice was cracked cedar and camphor oil.

"When he lies beneath the plum tree," he said, "not one flower falls."

They turned toward the screen.

"I watched," Ru Mo continued. "Even in lightning. Not a petal."

"And?"

"The tree blooms against season. Yet he sleeps through thunder. The beast avoids him. And now the stone breaks instead of glowing."

"Your point?"

Ru Mo tilted his head. "What if he isn't the problem?"

Qiu snorted. "Then what is?"

Ru Mo smiled faintly. "The world."

None laughed.

They all heard the low, near-imperceptible echo of something—not quite wind—rustling along the wards of the sealed scrolls overhead.

Yan stood. "If he cracks one more thing, I'll seal his soul in clay."

"Too late for clay," Ru Mo muttered, more to his tea than to them. "He already touched the rift once."

That brought every eye around.

"He what?"

"Accidentally. Briefly." Ru Mo took another sip. "Still… the mist didn't touch him. It parted."

The room chilled by half a degree.

Insects outside the archive went quiet.

Someone, quietly, whispered the name of a long-dead heretic. Then swallowed it again before it fully formed.

The handler said nothing for the first hundred steps.

He was thin, sharp-jawed, with a shoulder branded by old sect glyphs — not fresh, not faded. The kind of man who'd failed inner trials too many times and now ferried troublemakers to their fates.

Wei Chen walked behind him, hands tucked loosely into his sleeves, eyes half-lidded. His sandals slapped the old stone path softly, like a child trying not to wake a sleeping parent.

They passed a broken incense shrine, its stone roof collapsed inward. Moss coated the offering plates. The statue of a many-armed saint had no head.

"Don't fall behind," the handler snapped, not turning.

"I won't," Wei Chen said. "But she might."

The handler glanced back.

There was no one behind them.

Wei Chen just smiled.

The air grew colder as they descended, and older — not in years, but in flavor. The scent of dusted scrolls and wet bark clung to each breath. Trees bent the wrong way here. Roots crawled over the path like veins seeking memory.

"Don't look at the statues," the handler warned.

Wei Chen looked anyway.

Stone figures lined parts of the trail — disciples in meditation, warriors mid-kata, sages mid-debate — but all of them cracked, their faces weathered off. It was unclear whether time or intention had erased them.

"They say the Rift remembers what we try to forget," the handler muttered.

Wei Chen's eyes tracked a small white bird circling overhead.

"You hear that?"

The handler frowned. "Hear what?"

Wei Chen tilted his head. "Like… humming."

The handler stiffened.

Ahead, the trees thinned into pale stone outcroppings. The Rift began to come into view — not the cleft itself, but the way the air changed near it. Wind no longer moved straight. It eddied in slow spirals. Light grew brittle.

They passed a rope barrier strung with faded talismans. Most were unreadable. One still bore the glyph for confession.

"You clean from here to the edge," the handler said. "Don't touch anything that pulses."

"That seems reasonable."

"If you stare into the mist, it might whisper. Ignore it."

Wei Chen nodded, slowly, watching the bird's descent. It landed on a crooked branch near the cliffside and tucked its wings neatly.

"Lunch?"

"What?"

"Will it be delivered? Or do I need to bring my own?"

The handler stared at him.

Then spat once, turned, and left without another word.

Wei Chen stood alone at the path's end, where the stones turned soft with dust. The Rift itself lay just ahead — not a chasm, but a wound. A massive, silent mouth of the world, ringed in broken carvings and discarded offerings.

The wind breathed upward. And in it — faint, melodic — came the sound of chanting.

But no voices.

Just the sound.

The broom was older than the path.

Its bristles were frayed into threads. The wood handle had been patched twice, once with spirit glue, once with string. Wei Chen tested its weight in his palm. It leaned slightly to the left — not broken, just resigned.

He swept once, slowly.

Dust lifted. Settled again.

The cliff's edge loomed ten paces ahead, marked by nothing but an old iron ring sunk into the stone — once used to tether beasts of burden, now rusting in silence.

The Samsara Rift below exhaled.

Mist rose in soft pulses. Not smoke. Not fog. It moved like incense underwater. Shapes formed, stretched, dissolved. One looked like a tree with too many arms. Another, a face stretched wide in apology.

Wei Chen swept again.

The wind turned. Warmer. Then colder.

He paused.

Overhead, high above the cliffline, a lone plum blossom petal drifted down. No tree nearby. No wind to carry it. Just the single petal, turning slowly in the air like it had remembered something important too late.

Wei Chen watched it fall.

Just above the rift's edge, it caught a sudden gust and tumbled inward.

It burned.

Not visibly. Not with flame. But with absence.

The petal blackened and crumbled midair — not touching the mist, not even close. As if the rift had exhaled its own judgment and the petal had failed the test.

Wei Chen blinked.

Then stepped closer.

He stopped at the iron ring, toes nearly at the edge. The chanting grew louder here — not music, not voice. More like memory pretending to be song.

He tilted forward slightly, peering in.

No end.

Only light and slow movement. A hundred lifetimes of regret might live down there, tangled and humming.

A small smile tugged at his lips. "Still here."

He didn't sound surprised. Or pleased. Just… interested.

He shifted one foot to lean farther.

And the stone crumbled.

Not dramatically. Not with thunder.

Just one edge. A slip of gravel. A betrayal of weight.

His body tilted, coat flaring slightly behind him. For a moment, his hand reached out — not to catch anything, but to trace the curve of the fall.

There was no shout.

No struggle.

Just the silent motion of a boy moving down through the world.

Mist coiled upward in greeting.

The last thing seen from above: the plum blossom ring on his shoulder darkening as it met the rift's breath.

Then nothing.

Then quiet.

And the broom, still standing upright, rocking slightly in the wind.