The request came from an unexpected source: Wei Lin, the first outer sect disciple Kael had contracted.
Three months into his five-year service term, Wei Lin appeared at the warehouse with a question that would reshape everything.
"Teach me," he said without preamble. "Not just contract formation—the entire methodology. Theory, principles, ethical framework. Everything."
Kael looked up from his curriculum documentation. "Why?"
"Because I've been watching you for three months. The way you structure agreements, the precision of your terms, the fairness of your exchanges." Wei Lin's cultivated meridians—healed by Kael's contract—pulsed with stable energy. "You've created something unprecedented. A pathway bearer who's actually... trustworthy. I want to understand how that's possible."
"Trustworthiness is just consistent adherence to stated principles. Not particularly complex."
"For you, maybe. For most cultivators, principles dissolve the moment they become inconvenient." Wei Lin sat across from him, expression serious. "I've served in your network for three months. I've seen you refuse exploitative opportunities, honor contracts even when violation would be advantageous, maintain ethical standards when no one was watching. That's not normal. That's revolutionary."
Kael processed this assessment clinically. "You want to replicate the methodology."
"I want to understand it. And then yes, possibly replicate it." Wei Lin pulled out his own notebook—pages filled with observations about Kael's contract structures. "I've been documenting your techniques. But I'm missing the underlying theory. The 'why' behind the 'how.'"
This was it. The first of ten students he'd promised to teach. The beginning of methodology propagation beyond his own network.
"Teaching you would be long-term commitment," Kael said. "Minimum two years for comprehensive understanding, five years for practical mastery. Are you prepared for that investment?"
"I'm already contracted for five years. Might as well use that time learning something valuable." Wei Lin's expression carried determination. "Plus, if you're serious about creating ethical framework that survives beyond you, you need students who can carry it forward."
"Valid point." Kael stood, moving to his document archive. "But understand—learning contract methodology isn't just intellectual exercise. It will change how you think, how you perceive obligations, how you structure all future relationships. The transformation is irreversible."
"I'm already bound to you for five years. How much more transformed could I get?"
"Significantly. Being contracted is passive state. Understanding contract theory is active rewriting of cognitive architecture." Kael pulled out his teaching materials—months of preparation finally finding purpose. "You'll start thinking like I think. Seeing the world as interconnected obligations, calculating optimal fairness, measuring relationships through contract efficiency."
"Will I lose my humanity like you have?"
The question was direct, almost brutal in its honesty.
Kael considered several responses, then chose truth. "Unknown. My memory loss stems from pathway costs, not from theoretical understanding. But the analytical mindset is infectious—once you see reality as contractual structures, you can't unsee it. Normal human interaction becomes difficult when you're constantly calculating optimal terms."
"That's a significant warning."
"That's informed consent. I won't teach someone who doesn't understand the cost."
Kael's marked hand pulsed with two colors. "You have twenty-four hours to reconsider. If you still want to proceed tomorrow, we begin formal instruction."
Wei Lin nodded slowly. "I'll consider carefully."
He left, and Kael returned to his curriculum preparation, trying not to calculate the probability that Wei Lin would refuse after proper consideration.
Surprisingly, his inability to predict the outcome bothered him. He'd traded away most emotional capacity, but retained some form of... investment? Concern? Something that approached caring about whether his first potential student would actually commit.
Perhaps more humanity remained than he'd calculated.
Wei Lin returned the next morning with unexpected companion: Lan Mei, the mother whose daughter Kael had healed without contract.
"She wants to learn too," Wei Lin explained. "I told her about your offer to teach contract methodology. She's interested."
Lan Mei stepped forward, carrying her daughter on her hip—the child healthy, thriving, showing no signs of the spiritual deficiency that had nearly killed her. "You healed my daughter without asking for anything. That's power I've never seen used that way before. I want to understand how someone becomes that kind of person."
"I'm not a 'kind of person.' I'm a calculating mechanism that happens to optimize for fair dealing." Kael studied them both. "Teaching contract theory doesn't make you ethical. It makes you efficient. Ethics must be chosen separately."
"Then teach us both," Lan Mei said. "Theory and ethics. How to be powerful without being monstrous."
Kael felt something shift—not in his contracts, but in his perception of purpose. Two students. Different backgrounds, different motivations, both seeking understanding rather than just power.
This was what he'd promised the pathway. Knowledge propagation, methodology spreading, framework establishment.
"Sit," Kael said, gesturing to the cleared workspace. "We begin with fundamentals. What is a contract?"
"An agreement between parties," Wei Lin answered.
"Too simple. Try again."
"A binding obligation enforced through shared understanding of terms?" Lan Mei offered.
"Closer. But still incomplete." Kael pulled out chalk, drawing on a prepared board. "A contract is reality's agreement with itself about how specific obligations will be enforced. Every contract is three-party: the contractor, the contracted, and reality itself serving as enforcement mechanism."
He drew interconnected circles. "Most people think contracts are two-party agreements that reality happens to enforce. That's backwards. Reality enforces contracts because reality is fundamentally contractual—physics, causality, cause-effect relationships are all just contracts between different aspects of existence."
Wei Lin leaned forward, fascinated. "So when you form a binding contract..."
"I'm making explicit what was always implicit. I'm taking reality's natural tendency toward contractual enforcement and focusing it through specific, defined terms."
Kael's analytical mind shifted into teaching mode, something he hadn't experienced since... he couldn't remember when. The memory of previous teaching was gone.
"This is why my contracts are absolute—I'm not imposing obligation, I'm revealing obligation that already existed and making it unavoidable."
"That's..." Lan Mei struggled for words. "That's a completely different understanding of power."
"That's the foundation of everything else. Power isn't force applied to reality. Power is understanding reality's existing structures well enough to work with them rather than against them." Kael continued drawing, creating increasingly complex diagrams.
"Most cultivators try to impose their will on the world. Pathway bearers understand the world's will and align with it."
For two hours, he lectured. Theory of obligation, ethics of enforcement, mathematics of fair exchange. His students absorbed everything with intense focus, occasionally asking questions that revealed genuine understanding.
This was... satisfying. Not emotionally—he'd traded that away. But operationally. Knowledge transmission at high efficiency, comprehension developing, framework propagating exactly as designed.
"Tomorrow we cover practical application," Kael said as the session ended.
"Identifying contractual opportunities, structuring terms for mutual benefit, avoiding exploitative patterns. Questions?"
"One," Wei Lin said. "You mentioned ethics must be chosen separately from technique.
How do you choose ethics when you've lost the capacity to feel why ethics matter?"
The question struck something deep—the exact problem Kael had been grappling with for months.
"I don't choose. I follow protocols established by my past self—the person who still had emotional capacity to evaluate ethical weight." Kael's voice was quiet. "I trust that the Kael Yuan who loved his sister enough to steal for her medicine made correct moral judgments. My current self preserves those judgments even though I can't feel their foundation."
"That's..." Lan Mei paused. "That's incredibly sad."
"That's sustainable methodology. Feeling-based ethics are unreliable—they shift with mood, context, circumstance. Protocol-based ethics remain consistent regardless of emotional state." Kael organized his teaching materials. "This is why I can maintain ethical framework despite losing emotional foundation. The protocols survive even when the person who created them has dissolved."
"You're teaching us to build ethical protocols before we lose capacity to feel why they matter," Wei Lin said, understanding dawning.
"Correct. Invest in ethical framework construction early, while emotional capacity remains intact. Treat it as insurance against future corruption or capability loss."
Kael's marked hand pulsed. "That's lesson one, really. Everything else builds on it."
His students left, and Kael sat alone with his teaching materials, feeling something that approached satisfaction—or at least, operational success that his optimization patterns recognized as positive outcome.
One week into his ten-year commitment, he'd acquired two students. Eight years and fifty weeks remaining to teach eight more, document comprehensive theory, build infrastructure that survived beyond him.
The mathematics were achievable. The methodology was sound.
And for the first time since losing most of his memories, Kael felt like he was building something that mattered—even if he couldn't properly feel why it mattered.
That evening, Yan Shou found him reviewing the day's teaching session documentation.
"I heard you started teaching," the Ruin bearer said. "Two students. That's bold."
"That's contractual obligation fulfillment. I promised to teach ten students within five years." Kael didn't look up from his notes. "Two down, eight to go."
"You're building something. Not just surviving, actually building." Yan Shou's void-dark eyes studied him carefully. "That's different from three months ago, when you were just optimizing for existence."
"I renegotiated my pathway contract. Now I pay in future obligation rather than past memories." Kael finally looked up. "Teaching is part of that obligation. Methodology propagation, framework establishment, knowledge preservation."
"And? How does it feel?"
"I can't feel. You know that." Kael's tone remained neutral. "But operationally, teaching is satisfying. High-efficiency knowledge transmission, genuine comprehension development, framework replication. All metrics suggest successful outcome."
"That's not what I asked."
"That's the only answer I have." Kael returned to his documentation. "Whatever emotional satisfaction normal teachers experience from education, I've traded that capacity away. What remains is recognition that successful teaching serves my contractual obligations and personal goals simultaneously. That's sufficient."
Yan Shou was quiet for a moment. "You know what's interesting? You keep insisting you're not human anymore, but you're doing one of the most fundamentally human things possible—passing knowledge to the next generation. That's not calculation.
That's legacy."
"Legacy is just delayed optimization. I'm investing in future that continues my methodology after I'm gone."
"Keep telling yourself that." Yan Shou moved toward the exit. "But I've been watching you with those students. The way you explain things, the patience you show when they don't immediately understand, the care you take ensuring they grasp foundations before moving to applications. That's not mechanical instruction. That's teaching because you want them to actually learn, not just memorize."
"Want implies emotional investment. I'm incapable of—"
"Yeah, yeah. You're incapable of emotional response. Except you just spent two hours teaching two people who have no strategic value to you, fulfilling a contract you could have interpreted minimally, putting genuine effort into making sure they understood rather than just completing the obligation." Yan Shou paused at the doorway. "You're not as empty as you think, Kael. You've just optimized your humanity into forms you don't recognize anymore."
He left before Kael could formulate response.
Alone with his documentation, Kael tried to evaluate Yan Shou's assessment objectively.
Was there emotional investment in teaching? Or just recognition that comprehensive instruction served long-term contractual compliance better than minimal effort?
He couldn't distinguish between the two anymore.
The calculation and the caring—if caring still existed—had merged into something indistinguishable from pure optimization.
Maybe that was the answer. Maybe humanity and calculation weren't opposed states.
Maybe he'd just transformed one into the other, preserving human values by encoding them as optimization protocols.
Or maybe he was rationalizing the slow dissolution of whatever person he'd once been.
The mathematics couldn't tell him which interpretation was correct.
So he returned to his teaching materials, preparing for tomorrow's lesson, trusting that the protocols he followed were worth following even though he couldn't feel why.
That had to be enough.
Because it was all he had left.