The setting sun bled red across the eastern sky, but inside the living room the light remained subdued, the kind of deliberate dimness that made expressions difficult to read and silences easy to hold. Their uncle and aunt sat in their dark wooden chairs like a pair of figures in a painting, their faces half-lost in shadow.

  When Fang Yuan entered with the bottle still in hand, Gu Yue Dong Tu's brow tightened almost imperceptibly. He said nothing about it. His voice, when he spoke, carried the measured gravity of a man delivering something he'd prepared.

  — In the blink of an eye, you have both reached fifteen. The fact that you each possess the talent of a Gu Master is a source of genuine pride for this family. I will give each of you six Primeval stones. Take them, refining your Vital Gu demands a significant expenditure of essence, and you'll need every resource available to you.

  At his signal, two servants stepped forward and presented a small cloth bag to each brother. Fang Yuan took his without comment. Fang Zheng opened his immediately, his fingers closing around the six grayish-white oval stones with the expression of someone who had just been given something they hadn't dared to want. He rose quickly from his seat and faced his guardians with an earnestness that came from somewhere unguarded.

  — Thank you, Uncle, Aunt. Your nephew truly needed these.

  He paused, the emotion in his face outrunning his words for a moment.

  — You raised me to this day. That's not something I'll ever forget.

  Their uncle's smile settled into satisfaction. Their aunt's voice came down warm and slightly theatrical.

  — Sit down, child. You are not our biological sons, but we've never raised you as anything less. Watching you stand where you stand today is everything we could've hoped for. We were never blessed with children of our own, but having the two of you beside us has been more than enough.

  Fang Yuan watched the scene with the detachment of a man observing something that concerned him only in the most technical sense. He was present in the room the way a chair is present, occupying space, contributing nothing to the performance.

  Their uncle pressed forward while the warmth was still in the air.

  — Your aunt and I have discussed this at length. We'd like to make it official, to adopt you both and become, at last, a true family. Fang Zheng. What do you say?

  Fang Zheng went still for a moment, the breath caught in his chest. Then his face opened entirely.

  — Since our parents died, I've always felt a hollow where a family should be. Becoming one with you, it would be like a dream I'd stopped believing in.

  Their aunt's expression softened into something approaching genuine warmth, though the calculation behind it never quite left her eyes.

  — If you are truly our son now, shouldn't you call us something other than Uncle and Aunt?

  — Father. Mother.

  The words came out of Fang Zheng with a fervor that surprised even him. The smiles on both adults' faces widened in unison.

  — What a good son, said the aunt, pressing two fingers to the corner of her eye. Ten years well spent.

  The living room fell quiet. Two pairs of eyes turned to the elder brother.

  — And you, Fang Yuan? asked Dong Tu, his gaze settling with particular attention.

  Fang Yuan shook his head. No hesitation, no preamble. The refusal was as flat and final as a door closing.

  — Big brother… Fang Zheng began, his voice already carrying the shape of a plea.

  His uncle stopped him with a raised hand. Something shifted in Dong Tu's eyes, not surprise, but a recalculation happening in real time, smooth and practiced.

  — If that's your choice, nephew, we won't force it. You are fifteen now, of legal age to establish yourself independently and continue the Fang lineage in your own name. I anticipated that this might be your answer. I've set aside two hundred Primeval stones to support you in getting settled.

  — Two hundred stones!

  Fang Zheng's voice came out before he could stop it. He stared at the number as though it had a physical shape. He'd never held that much, had never even imagined holding that much. Six stones had felt like a fortune a moment ago. A pang moved through him, sharp and irrepressible, gone almost before he could name it, and he was ashamed of it immediately.

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  Fang Yuan shook his head again.

  The motion was small and unhurried, and it disposed of two hundred Primeval stones with the same indifference one might use to set aside a cup that had gone cold.

  — If there's nothing else, your nephew will take his leave.

  He picked up the wine jar, stood, and walked out of the room without waiting for a response. The door didn't slam. It simply closed, leaving behind a silence that was colder than the air outside.

  Fang Zheng sat without moving. His uncle and aunt's faces had settled into something dark and carefully composed.

  — Father, Mother, he said at last, rising, big brother hasn't been himself lately. Please, let me go to him. Perhaps I can

  — Leave it, said Dong Tu, with the weariness of a man setting down a burden he'd expected. These things can't be forced, my son. Your presence here is already more than enough for me. He turned toward the doorway. Servants! Escort young master Fang Zheng to his quarters and see to his comfort.

  When they were alone, the couple sat in the dark for a long while as the last of the daylight died outside the window. The mountain breeze had picked up, moving through the bamboo somewhere beyond the walls with a low, continuous sound.

  Finally, Dong Tu's voice came out of the darkness, quiet, precise, stripped of everything it had worn an hour ago.

  — The brat saw through it.

  The clan's rules on inheritance were unambiguous. At sixteen, a child held the legal right to claim what their parents had left behind. The fortune Fang Yuan's parents had accumulated, land, property, holdings that his uncle and aunt had been managing, and quietly benefiting from, for a decade, was not a matter of hundreds of stones. It was not a matter of thousands. If Fang Yuan had accepted the adoption, he would've folded himself into a family unit whose patriarch controlled his assets. If he'd taken the two hundred stones as settlement for his independence, he would've signed away his legal claim to everything else. Either path led to the same destination.

  He'd taken neither.

  — At least we've secured Fang Zheng, Dong Tu said, after a moment. The Grade A talent is ours.

  — And what do we do about Fang Yuan? His wife's voice had shed its warmth entirely, what remained underneath it thin and almost frantic. We can't simply let him

  — We don't have to. He's fifteen, not sixteen, we have time, and we have tools. He's already given us the shape of the story we need. The drinking, the erratic behavior, the refusal of a generous settlement from a grieving family who only wanted to care for him. Dong Tu paused, letting the architecture of it settle in his own mind before continuing. We send Shen Cui. She knows what she's there to do. She cries assault, we arrive with witnesses, and we have a young man who has disgraced himself and his household, drunk, unstable, dangerous. A scandal of that kind is sufficient grounds for expulsion under clan law. He loses his standing, he loses his claim, and we lose nothing we can't afford.

  His wife was quiet for a moment.

  — Your mind has always been sharper than his, she said at last. That little wolf thinks he can outrun us. He'll break his teeth on our doorstep.

  The night deepened around them. Dark clouds had moved in across the mountain, swallowing the stars, leaving only a thin cold moonlight to find its way through the window.

  Fang Yuan walked alone through the green bamboo forest, the wine jar loose in one hand, his breath making small clouds in the chill air. He knew exactly what was being decided in that living room behind him. He'd known before he sat down. The knowledge produced nothing in him, no anger, no contempt, not even the particular satisfaction of having been right.

  Birds die for food. Men die for wealth.

  It held everywhere, on Earth, in this world of Gu Masters. Friendship, love, the weight of shared blood, all of it negotiable, all of it surrenderable, when the sum on the other side of the scale was large enough. His uncle and aunt weren't villains in any interesting sense. They were simply people doing what people did when resources were at stake. He understood them the way he understood weather, not with warmth, not with hostility, but with the clear-eyed patience of someone who's learned to plan around the rain.

  The inheritance wasn't a matter of family or memory. It was a resource. It would fund his cultivation, and his cultivation would carry him somewhere worth going. That was the full extent of its significance.

  Inside the mansion, Fang Zheng sat at his desk in the warm lamplight, his class notes spread before him. The thick walls held the mountain wind at bay, and a cup of ginseng tea sent thin curls of fragrant steam into the air beside his hand.

  — Young Master Fang Zheng. Your bath water has been prepared.

  Shen Cui's voice drifted through the door, soft, unhurried, shaped with a care that his ear wasn't accustomed to receiving. Fang Zheng's chest did something he couldn't quite account for.

  — Then... bring it in, please.

  She entered with a precise curtsy, her movements practiced and quiet, her expression radiating a warmth calibrated to the exact temperature of reassurance. As she straightened, her eyes found his with something in them that managed to look like affection.

  — Your servant greets the young master.

  For Shen Cui, the arithmetic of the situation was simple and had been simple from the moment Fang Zheng's result was announced at the ceremony. Fang Yuan was a Grade B talent in decline, retreating into wine and isolation, shedding whatever social capital he'd once held. Fang Zheng was the clan's rising star, Grade A, newly adopted into a household with resources, his future opening in every direction at once. Realigning her attention cost her nothing she valued. The new calculation wasn't merely prudent. It was, by any measure that mattered to her, an opportunity.

  Fang Zheng felt none of the current running beneath the surface of the room. He felt the warmth of the tea, heard the softness in her voice, and allowed himself to settle into the unfamiliar comfort of being attended to, of being, for perhaps the first time in his life, the center of someone's deliberate care.

  A few hundred meters away, in the bamboo forest, Fang Yuan walked on through the cold with his mind already elsewhere, already turning over the next step, the next problem, the next thing that needed to be accounted for and arranged. The night pressed in around him, and he moved through it without slowing.