That night, Han Li lay awake in the dark, a strange, quiet happiness glowing in his chest. The crushing pressure was gone. He had done it. In twenty-five days of torment—of feeling his body tear itself apart and rebuild around a core of screaming light—he had reached the first tier. He had met the impossible deadline. He would stay.
The relief was so profound it felt like a physical unclenching. For the first time since arriving in Green Valley, he was not failing. He was not disappointing. He was exactly where he was supposed to be.
The bone-deep exhaustion, a leftover echo of the day's final, cataclysmic breakthrough, pulled at him. He did not fight it. He breathed out, long and slow, and let the peaceful darkness of true, earned sleep take him.
---
Dawn arrived quietly, like every other day in Green Valley. A soft breeze rustled through bamboo leaves, and faint morning mist curled lazily over the stone pathways.
Han Li opened his eyes and slowly sat up. His body felt different—lighter, as if a layer of mundane heaviness had been scrubbed away. Something had awakened inside him, a small, warm sun now spinning steadily in the center of his being.
He stepped out of his small room.
Doctor Lu was already outside.
A simple breakfast had been set on the stone table—steamed buns, porridge, a pot of warm herbal tea. It was ordinary food, yet to Han Li, who had known years of coarse barley and watery broth, it felt like a feast.
He hurried forward, genuine worry flashing across his face. "Master, why did you prepare the meal? You should have called me! How can you work when I am here?"
Doctor Lu chuckled, lifting his cup calmly. "Hahaha, no need to worry. You are my disciple, Han Li—my only disciple. The only thing you must do… is cultivate well and reach the second tier as soon as possible."
The words were warm, but they carried the weight of a new expectation. The first hurdle was cleared. The next awaited.
Han Li hesitated, then lowered his head obediently. "…Yes, Master."
He sat and began eating quietly, the food tasting of security and a future being carefully, deliberately built.
---
Days turned into weeks. Weeks into months.
Life in Green Valley settled into a steady, structured rhythm. It was a world of quiet focus, far removed from the dust and struggle of Lingshui.
Every morning, Han Li sat cross-legged beneath the ancient willow tree whose branches trailed in the lake. He repeated the mysterious mantra Doctor Lu had given him. Harmony is our nature. Let the Dao flow through me. Some mornings, his mind became clear as still water, and he could feel a faint, trickling energy seeping into his new core. Other mornings, it was like trying to grasp smoke—the words empty, the connection elusive.
Each midday, without fanfare, Doctor Lu would hand him a small herbal pill. They were never the same—sometimes bitter, sometimes fragrant, always strangely invigorating. They would dissolve on his tongue with a rush of warmth that his dantian absorbed eagerly. "To aid your cultivation," Doctor Lu would say, his eyes watching Han Li's reaction closely.
Afternoons were for study. This was the part Han Li had dreamed of. He learned to read and write complex characters until his wrist ached. He memorized the intricate river-maps of human meridians. He learned to identify hundreds of herbs by sight, smell, and texture—Ghost-Cap Mushrooms, Silver-Threaded Ginseng, Moon-Touched Lotus. He practiced the subtle art of pulse diagnosis until he could detect the faint flutter of a weak heart or the sluggish drag of fever.
Life felt structured. Purposeful. Almost peaceful.
And yet…
A quiet dissonance began to hum at the edge of his awareness.
Doctor Lu treated him with meticulous care, but it was the care of a master artisan for a rare piece of jade—attentive, precise, but detached. He was a resource being polished, not a child being raised. The questions Doctor Lu asked were about Qi flow and meridians, never about home, never about dreams.
And the mantra… it didn't feel like ordinary medicine training. The words spoke of eternity, of emptiness, of becoming one with the Dao. Sometimes, in his more fanciful moments, Han Li wondered if it could be a fragment of something legendary—a longevity mantra spoken of in village tales, used by ancient hermits to cheat death.
The thought was thrilling. It pushed him to practice harder, to listen more closely to the old man's every word.
---
One late afternoon, near the end of his third month, the fragile peace of the valley shattered.
Han Li was returning from the western forest, a basket of freshly gathered Sky-Spirit Orchids on his arm. The sun hung low, painting the world in long, golden shadows. The air was cool and carried the damp, rich scent of decaying leaves.
He was on the familiar deer path when a sound sliced through the tranquil twilight—a sharp, frightened cry, cut off with sudden, absolute finality.
Hahk—
Then silence.
Han Li froze mid-step. Every instinct, honed from a childhood of avoiding the village bullies and the tax collector's wrath, screamed at him to turn around. To walk quickly back to his hut. To see nothing, hear nothing, know nothing.
But a deeper, more stubborn curiosity—the same curiosity that had made him stare at clouds and dream of cultivators—pushed him forward. Slowly, he commanded himself. Silently.
He set the basket down without a sound and melted into the deeper shadows of the pines. His movements were cautious, his breathing shallow. He became a shadow among shadows.
Twenty paces ahead, the forest thinned into a small, rocky clearing.
He stopped behind the thick, furrowed trunk of an ancient pine and peered around it.
There, in the center of the clearing, stood Doctor Lu.
The old man's grey robes were pristine, hanging perfectly still in the windless air. His posture was relaxed, almost casual.
At his feet lay a man.
Han Li had never seen him before. He was dressed in rough, travel-stained clothes, a worn pack spilled open beside him. He was not sleeping. He was motionless in a way that spoke of more than unconsciousness—a total, profound stillness.
There was no blood. No visible wound. No sign of a struggle.
But Han Li had just spent months studying the body's secret geography—the meridian points, the pressure nodes, the pathways of life and death.
He had seen Doctor Lu's hand move. Not a punch, not a slash. A flick of the wrist, two fingers extended, striking a precise point on the man's neck with a speed that blurred. There had been a faint, sickly grey light around those fingers for just an instant.
No… I must have seen wrong. Master Lu wouldn't… he couldn't…
The denial was instinctive, a desperate clutch at the peaceful reality he had known. But it shattered against the brutal, silent evidence before him.
It was not medicine. It was not a brawl.
It was a technique. Precise. Deadly. Efficient. The martial art of a killer, not a healer.
Han Li's breath fractured in his throat. His body refused to obey—caught somewhere between running and collapsing.
Doctor Lu looked down at the still form, his head tilted slightly. A faint, satisfied curve touched his lips. Then his head snapped up.
"Who's there?"
The voice was sharp, clear, and utterly cold. It cut through the silent clearing, vibrating with a threat Han Li had never heard in his master's tone.
Han Li pressed himself against the rough bark, becoming part of the tree. Don't move. Don't make a sound. Don't even think.
He heard no answer. Only the sigh of the wind he could no longer feel.
Doctor Lu's eyes, sharp and calculating, swept the treeline. They passed over Han Li's hiding place. For a heart-stopping eternity, they seemed to linger.
Then, with a soft grunt, the old man bent down. He hooked his hands under the dead man's arms and dragged the body effortlessly into the thicker brush at the clearing's edge, disappearing from view.
The moment he was gone, survival instinct overrode paralysis.
Han Li moved. He turned and fled back down the path, his footsteps crashing through the undergrowth in panicked, unthinking haste. The basket of orchids was forgotten. The peaceful rhythm of Green Valley was forgotten. All that mattered was the space between him and the clearing.
He burst from the treeline, sprinted across the open ground near the lake, and threw himself into his hut, slamming the wooden door shut behind him.
He leaned against it, his chest heaving, breath coming in ragged, painful gasps.
"Master… he…" The words were broken, disbelieving whispers. "He killed someone. He knows martial arts."
The reality of it crashed over him, cold and suffocating. The gentle physician who taught him herbs and meridians had just ended a life with the casual precision of swatting a fly.
Then why… why did he never teach me? Why the pretense? Why the lies?
The willow leaves rustled outside his window—soft and gentle, just as they always had during his morning meditations. But now, instead of peace, the sound felt like mockery.
As he stood there trembling, he heard a noise outside—the soft crunch of a footstep on the gravel path.
Panic seized him. In a flash, he ripped off his outer robe, dove onto his bed, and pulled the blanket over his head, pretending to be asleep. His pulse thundered in his ears, a frantic drumbeat of terror.
The footsteps paused outside his door. A moment of silence stretched, thin and terrifying.
Then, as they resumed, moving toward Doctor Lu's own chamber, Han Li heard it—a soft, familiar humming. The same peaceful melody the old man always hummed while preparing herbs or grinding medicines.
Tonight, in the dark, it sounded wrong. A lullaby sung by a wolf.
Doctor Lu did not call out. Did not check on him. He simply retired for the night, the gentle humming fading as his door closed.
Han Li lay in the dark, eyes wide open, staring at nothing.
He could not sleep that night.
He could only see, over and over again, the flick of a wrist, the grey light, the terrible, final stillness.
For the first time, Han Li realized—Green Valley was not a sanctuary.
It was a cage.
The cage he couldn't free himself even if he want.
He had no where to go not just he can't go home, but even going home can't make him run from grasp of this form of his master..
So he made himself believe that he he saw nothing it was just a bad guy and master killed him to uphold justice...
Just with these last thoughts han li had slept.