The trade road was a ribbon of dust and ambition, cutting through the green flesh of the world. For three days, Ye Xingliu had walked it. His feet, once soft, were hardening. His stomach, once full of stolen buns and his mother's cooking, was a hollow ache. Mei, perched on his back, was a small, quiet weight, her usual chatter silenced by the enormity of their journey.
Little Comet, however, was a fountain of endless commentary.
"Ooh, look! A sparkly rock!"
"Is that a cloud that looks like a grumpy turtle?I think it's a sign!"
"My spiritual sense detects…dust. So much dust. Are we there yet?"
Ye Xingliu didn't answer. He was too busy listening to the road's new symphony. The creak of a distant merchant's cart, the rhythmic crunch of his own footsteps, the whisper of the wind through the tall grass. It was a different music from his village, more varied, more anonymous.
It was outside a ramshackle waystation, little more than a roof and a bench, that the symphony gained a new, discordant instrument: a loud, rattling snore.
Slumped against a post was a man who looked like he had been assembled from rags and regret. His robes were stained with things Ye Xingliu didn't want to identify, and the air around him was thick with the pungent, fermented smell of cheap wine. A large, dark red gourd hung from his belt.
"Eww," Mei whispered, pinching her nose.
"A connoisseur of the finer vintages, I see," Little Comet chirped, its light flickering with distaste.
Ye Xingliu was about to steer clear when the man's snoring ceased. One eye, surprisingly clear and sharp, cracked open and fixed on him.
"You," the man grunted, his voice a gravelly rumble. "Boy with the stars in his eyes and the stink of void-ash on him. You're blocking my sun."
Ye Xingliu froze. Stars in his eyes. Void-ash. This was no ordinary drunkard.
The man—Old Drunkard Huo, as he would later be known—sat up with a groan. He took a long, loud swig from his gourd, then wiped his mouth with the back of a grimy sleeve. "Lost your home. Gained a brat and a… glowing bug. What else have you gained, I wonder?"
He didn't wait for an answer. His gaze, now fully open, was like a physical weight. It felt like he was looking past Ye Xingliu's eyes, past his bones, right into the humming, 1%-awakened core of his spirit.
"Hmph. A thread. A beginning." Old Huo belched. "Let's see if you're worth the road you're walking."
He pointed a dirty fingernail at a fat, bluebottle fly buzzing lazily over a discarded rind. "Catch it."
Ye Xingliu blinked. "Catch… the fly?"
"With these." Old Huo tossed a pair of worn, wooden chopsticks into the dust at Ye Xingliu's feet. "No hands. No 'Life Sensing' tricks. Just your two eyes, your two hands, and the chopsticks. Go on."
It was a ridiculous request. An impossible one. But the look in Old Huo's eyes held no mockery. It was a test.
Ye Xingliu set Mei down. "Stay here." He picked up the chopsticks, his grip awkward. He focused on the fly, its flight path erratic and unpredictable. He lunged.
Snap. The chopsticks closed on empty air. The fly buzzed away, unconcerned.
Old Huo took another swig of wine. "Again."
Ye Xingliu tried again. And again. And again. He stumbled around the dusty clearing, swiping and snapping at the infuriating insect. He tried to anticipate its path, to outthink it, but it was pure chaos. He failed the tenth time. The twentieth. The fiftieth.
Mei watched, her initial worry turning to boredom. Little Comet offered unhelpful advice. "A little to the left! No, your other left!"
Sweat dripped into Ye Xingliu's eyes. His arm ached. Frustration bubbled in his chest. This was stupid. He had faced Void Worms! He was 1% awakened! And he was being bested by a fly!
On the ninety-ninth try, he lunged with such force he tripped over his own feet, landing face-first in the dust. The fly buzzed triumphantly past his ear.
A sound escaped his lips. It wasn't a cry of anger. It was a laugh. A short, breathless, incredulous laugh. The sheer, absurd futility of it all—the fall from cosmic tragedy to comedic failure—struck him as profoundly funny.
He pushed himself up, dust coating his front, and looked at Old Huo, who was watching him with that same unreadable expression.
"Again," Ye Xingliu said, a genuine grin spreading across his dirty face. He didn't wait for permission. He raised the chopsticks for the one-hundredth time.
He didn't catch it. But this time, his movement was different. It wasn't a frantic lunge. It was calmer, more accepting of the failure. It was the motion of someone who had decided the trying itself was the point.
The chopsticks snapped shut a hair's breadth from the fly's wing.
Old Huo lowered his gourd. A slow, deep smile cracked the grime on his face. It transformed him. For a moment, he didn't look like a beggar. He looked like a mountain that had decided to smile.
"Good," he rumbled. The single word carried more weight than a thousand praises. "A sharp mind is common. A strong body is cheap. But a stubborn heart… a heart that can fail ninety-nine times and laugh before the hundredth…" He nodded, as if to himself. "That is a heart that can walk the long road."
He stood up, brushing the dust from his ragged robes with a casual air that did nothing to clean them. He took one last, long pull from his gourd, then hooked it back onto his belt.
"The boy and the girl will slow you down. The bug will annoy you. The road will try to break you." He looked Ye Xingliu dead in the eye. "Follow me."
Without another word, Old Drunkard Huo turned and began to amble down the trade road, his steps surprisingly steady and swift.
Ye Xingliu didn't hesitate. He didn't ask where they were going, or who this man was. He simply picked up Mei, felt Little Comet zing back to his shoulder, and took the first step to follow.
The Dao was a road. And it seemed he had just found his first, very strange, traveling companion.
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