Chapter One: The Scale of Mortality
In the Valley of Whispering Winds, life was not a poem—it was a silent struggle against oblivion.
Here, on the fringes of the mortal world, humans were born and died like wild grass. No one asked for their names. No one recorded their history.
Zhou Fan was only ten years old, yet his features carried a weight that did not belong to a child. While the clan's children chased cloth balls through dusty paths, he would sit for hours beside the stagnant Ashen River, watching slow whirlpools coil around half-submerged stones. To the others, Zhou Fan was an odd child. Some called him the Silent Fool. Others called him the Little Poet, for he often traced cryptic words into the sand with a broken tree branch.
They did not know that Zhou Fan was trying to read the world.
"Fan-er, my little Fan, stop staring into emptiness and come eat your wheat porridge."
His elder sister, Ling Xia, called out with a voice steeped in warmth. She was the only one who saw buried intelligence within his silence.
Zhou Fan sat at the rickety wooden table. His gaze settled on his sister's hands—rough, scarred with countless small cuts earned from gathering spirit herbs along treacherous cliffs, offerings taken as tribute.
"Sister," Zhou Fan asked quietly, his tone unnervingly calm, "why do we gather herbs for others?"
Ling Xia froze. Under the dim glow of the oil lamp, sadness crept into her expression.
"Because they are Immortals, little one. They possess the heavens, and we survive on what falls from their table. It is said that a single Immortal can live for a thousand years and wield power capable of shaking mountains. We… we are merely mortals."
In that moment, Zhou Fan felt no admiration—only injustice.
Why should his sister's hands be ruined for someone who lived a thousand years?
A black seed took root within him. Not a desire for heroism, but a desire for possession.
If immortality was the blade that ruled the world, then he wanted to hold that blade.
Three days passed, and tension within the clan reached its breaking point.
The Desolate Beast—a creature resembling a scale-covered hyena—had begun raiding the clan's storage at night. No one had seen it clearly, but it left devastation in its wake, along with the disappearance of precious spirit herbs gathered through blood and hardship.
The clan elder, Zhou Man, was a large and imposing man who prided himself on physical strength, having reached the first stage of Body Tempering. Yet even he was helpless against the beast's speed.
As the men argued heatedly, Zhou Fan sat quietly in the corner, prodding a lump of beast dung he had found in the fields with a wooden stick.
He analyzed in silence.
"Residue of Coldshade Grass… This plant grows only near underground springs behind Silent Crow Rock. The scent is strong—the nest is nearby. Timing… the beast always attacks when the moon reaches its peak and the wind blows from the east."
He told no one.
Who would believe a child?
Then, without warning, day turned into a false night.
An Envoy of Long Yuan descended from a violet cloud.
He was not merely human—he was a mass of spiritual pressure so dense that the air itself seemed to flee. Everyone dropped to their knees, including the clan elder.
Zhou Fan, clutching a small notebook to his chest, felt an overwhelming weight crush him, as though a mountain had been placed upon his lungs. His joints cracked. His forehead struck the ground. Primitive terror flooded his body—every instinct screamed:
Hide. Don't breathe.
From the corner of his eye, he saw the clan elder attempting to plead. He saw the cold indifference in the envoy's gaze. Then he saw the moment the elder's head was severed.
There was no drama to it. It was like snapping a dry branch.
Blood sprayed.
A warm drop landed on Zhou Fan's cheek.
At that instant, something inside the boy's mind shifted.
Shock and terror collapsed into absolute zero—then transformed into icy clarity. It was as though his mind detached itself from emotion to protect him from madness.
He looked at his sister. The envoy's gaze had settled upon her with disdain, as though she were nothing more than merchandise.
Zhou Fan remembered his calculations about the beast.
He remembered Coldshade Grass.
If I die now, my sister will die as a servant. And I will become just another number in the clan's grave.
His body trembling, teeth chattering, Zhou Fan stood.
He looked pitiful—a small child with blood smeared across his face, standing before an entity that could annihilate the valley with a single thought.
"G-great one…" Zhou Fan spoke. His voice shook, then steadied.
"Killing… will not bring the herbs back. But… I know where they are."
The envoy sneered, insulted that an ant dared speak without permission. He raised his hand to erase Zhou Fan from existence—
—but something in the boy's eyes stopped him.
They were not the eyes of a terrified child.
They were the eyes of someone staking his life on reason.
"Speak," the envoy said, his voice cold enough to freeze the soul.
Zhou Fan delivered his deductions calmly.
"The beast does not flee far. It hides within underground fissures behind Silent Crow Rock. The traces it left are not ordinary mud, but sulfur-rich soil—found only there. Go now, and you will find it digesting the clan's harvest."
Seconds stretched into eternity.
The envoy vanished like lightning.
After ten breaths, he returned—holding the beast's massive head in one hand and a sack of stolen herbs in the other.
He looked at Zhou Fan anew, confusion flickering within his gaze.
"Innate intelligence and precise observation at such an age… Even within the sect, few possess this level of mental clarity under pressure."
Zhou Fan slammed his forehead into the ground until blood flowed.
"I wish to enter the trial. Take me with you. I will be useful to the sect."
Zhou Fan did not yet understand that intelligence alone meant little in the world of cultivators.
The envoy agreed coldly, concealing a mocking smile. He knew the boy possessed crippled spirit veins—the weakest form of talent.
"Very well, little accountant," the envoy said.
"We shall see if your mind can protect you when you realize your body is nothing more than a leaking vessel—unable to retain even a single drop of energy."
And so, Zhou Fan left the valley.
Not as a victorious hero, but as one who purchased his life with intellect—stepping into a world that would shatter his pride at its very first trial, and force him to realize that Heaven's Calculation was far crueler and more complex than calculating the path of a beast in a forgotten valley.