Supervisor Lao Wang appeared before Matriarch Feng with the expression of a man tasked with the impossible feat of bottling the wind. His face, usually a map of tranquil resignation, was contorted in confusion.
"Matriarch," he began, his voice a rough whisper.
Feng looked up from her ledgers, her gaze as sharp as ice. "What troubles you, Lao Wang? Your section has operated without incident for twenty years."
"It's the new boy, Matriarch. The sweeper... Kenji," Lao Wang said, struggling to find the words. "He's... he's too efficient."
The word sounded absurd in the still air of the office. Feng arched an eyebrow, an almost imperceptible movement. "Is efficiency now a problem in the Silver Cloud Clan?"
"It's not that!" Lao Wang hurried to correct himself. "He cleans the outer courtyard, a two-man job, before the sun is high. The work is impeccable. But then... he just stands there. Motionless in the center of the courtyard. Just... watching. He isn't idle, it's worse than that. His inactivity is... productive. The other servants are on edge. They feel his gaze measuring their bones, calculating their movements. His stillness is more disruptive to the workflow than the laziness of three men combined."
Matriarch Feng leaned back, a flicker of understanding in her eyes. The anomaly she had admitted into the clan was beginning to upset the ecosystem. You couldn't place a high-performance engine in an old cart without the entire structure groaning under the strain.
"I understand," she said. "Your point is well-argued. I will handle it."
Moments later, Kenji was summoned. As he walked to the matriarch's office, his mind wasn't on the courtyard. The courtyard was a closed file, an optimized system that no longer required his primary attention. His central processor was busy with a new project: the optimization of the hidden asset, Xiao Yue. Feng's summons was not a surprise; it was a predictable consequence. His performance level was unsustainable for his current position. He would either be fired or promoted.
"I've been informed of your... performance," Feng told him as soon as he entered. "Your efficiency is satisfactory, but its side effects are not. Therefore, I have decided to reassign you."
Kenji remained silent, waiting for the new directive like a computer awaits a command.
"There is a task that requires discretion, punctuality, and a minimum of social interaction," Feng continued. "The Silent Bamboo Pavilion. You will deliver three daily meals to the Young Lady Xiao Yue. The path is long and isolated. You will not speak to anyone on the way. You will leave the tray on the outer stone table, bow, and depart. Under no circumstances are you to address the Young Lady. Your presence must be like that of a shadow. Is that clear?"
"Perfectly," Kenji replied.
Analysis of reassignment, he thought as he withdrew. Transfer from a mass-production role to one of specialized, high-discretion service. The target is a key but isolated figure in the organization: Xiao Yue. This is an unprecedented opportunity for first-hand data collection. The investment in efficiency has yielded an unexpected but strategically superior return.
The path to the Silent Bamboo Pavilion was, in itself, a filter. It veered away from the bustling main roads of the complex, ascending a gentle hill through a dense bamboo forest that muffled all sound. The air grew cooler, cleaner. It was a transition from the noisy operations center to a quiet executive office.
Arriving for the first time, he saw the pavilion. It was an elegant, solitary structure of dark wood and gray tiles, surrounded by a small, manicured garden. And there, in a grassy clearing, he saw her.
Xiao Yue.
She was young, perhaps his own age, with a slender but strong frame. What first captured his attention was her hair: a cascade of intense, vibrant red, like maple leaves in peak autumn, which contrasted dramatically with the serene green of the garden and bamboo. She wore it in a high, practical ponytail to keep it out of her way, but a few rebellious strands framed a face of fine, noble features. She wore a simple dress, of better quality than the servants' but far from the ostentatious silks of her siblings. In her hands, she held a wooden practice sword.
She was practicing a basic stance, the first of the Silver Cloud Sword forms. But she was executing it terribly. Her beautiful face was contorted in frustration. She lunged, the sword cutting the air with a weak, uncertain whistle, and her body stumbled, losing balance for a split second. A grunt of anger escaped her lips. She readjusted and tried again. The result was the same.
Kenji, standing at the entrance to the path with the food tray in his hands, remained motionless. His mind, trained to see systems and processes, didn't see a girl struggling with a sword. He saw a piece of precision machinery operating with faulty parts and a massive loss of energy.
He wasn't just observing her movements; his analytical mind, almost by instinct, perceived the inefficiencies on a more fundamental level. He could see how she gathered her internal energy, her Qi, in her dantian. But the moment she tried to channel it through her meridians to the sword, the process broke down. It was like watching a high-pressure pipe with dozens of tiny fissures.
Energy leakage in the initial stance, he cataloged in his mind. Hip alignment is incorrect, causing a 3% loss. Tension in the sword shoulder creates a bottleneck, wasting another 7%. Breath is not synchronized with movement, a power cycle de-optimization resulting in an additional 9% inefficiency. The grip on the sword is too tense, preventing a smooth, final flow. It's a disaster.
Xiao Yue failed again and, with a choked cry of rage, kicked a small rock in the garden.
Kenji's final verdict was instant and brutally clear, a bold headline in his mind's report: A high-potential asset completely underutilized! Her spiritual foundations are clearly high, as the collected intelligence indicated, but the execution is abysmal. Zero training, zero supervision, zero optimization. This isn't just negligence, it's corporate sabotage by omission.
Following Feng's orders, he moved forward silently, placed the tray on the stone table, bowed to the frustrated young woman's back, and withdrew. But as he walked back down the bamboo path, a new prime directive took over his strategic planning. The Xiao Yue Project had officially begun. And the first step was to understand the science behind her failures. Empirical observation was not enough; he needed the technical manual.
That same afternoon, he requested another audience with Matriarch Feng. This was unheard of. A newly reassigned servant asking to see the head of operations twice in one day. When he was admitted, Feng's expression was one of cold curiosity.
"Speak," she said, without preamble. "I expect this to be of vital importance."
"It is, for my long-term development as an asset to the Silver Cloud Clan," Kenji replied, using the language he knew intrigued her. "I wish to make an investment proposal," he continued. "It concerns my salary of five copper coins per week."
Feng arched an eyebrow.
"I propose to waive my salary for the next two months. Sixty days. A total of forty copper coins. In exchange for this… investment on my part, I request a single privilege: access to the complex's library during my rest hours. Specifically, to the basic manuals on cultivation theory. The texts that the younger disciples no longer find useful."
The silence in the office grew thick. Matriarch Feng stared at him, her mind working to process the audacity of the request. A servant, an outcast picked up from the street, not only wanted to learn to read, but wanted to read the foundational texts of cultivation, the basis of the clan's power. And he was willing to pay for it with the meager salary he earned.
"And why does a servant need to know about meridians and the flow of Qi?" she asked, her voice a sharp probe.
"The same reason a sweeper needs to understand the direction of the wind," Kenji retorted without hesitation. "To perform my job with maximum efficiency. Understanding the fundamental principles of the world in which I operate will allow me to anticipate problems and serve the clan in more effective ways in the future. My body is weak. My only tool to increase my value is my ability to process information. I deny the clan the potential of this asset if I do not nurture it with data."
Feng leaned back in her chair. It was, once again, the strangest and most arrogant logic she had ever heard. There was no personal ambition in his words, no desire for power. He spoke of himself as if he were a tool that needed sharpening. Most servants who showed interest in cultivation did so with dreams of glory and power. This boy spoke of it as if it were a maintenance manual.
It was a risk. An educated servant could be a dangerous servant. But it was also an opportunity. And the cost to her was nil. The books he asked for were collecting dust on the lowest shelves of the library, ignored by all.
"Your request is… unusual," she said finally. "But your work has been impeccable. Very well. Your salary is suspended for sixty days. I will inform the librarian, Elder Ji. You may only access the General Fundamentals section. If I find you a single step beyond that section, you will not only be expelled, but your legs will be broken as a warning to any others with strange ideas. Understood?"
"Understood," Kenji said with a nod of his head. Negotiation successful. Access to the knowledge department secured.
Thus began a new phase in Kenji's life. His days were a cycle of exhausting physical labor: helping in the kitchens, cleaning the corridors, and three times a day, making the silent journey to the Silent Bamboo Pavilion. Each trip was an observation session, where he watched Xiao Yue repeat the same mistakes, her frustration growing day by day.
His nights, however, were transformed. Instead of collapsing on his cot, he would head to a forgotten corner of the clan's vast library. Elder Ji, a man as old and dusty as the tomes he guarded, looked at him with disdain the first time but complied with Feng's orders.
For Kenji, entering that library was like connecting a terminal to the mainframe. He didn't read for pleasure. He devoured information. "Fundamentals of Qi Flow," "Anatomy of the Spiritual Meridians," "The Twelve Foundational Stances of the Silver Cloud Sword." They weren't stories of mystical power to him; they were engineering manuals, physics textbooks, treatises on energy economics.
He created flowcharts in his mind. He understood the concept of "spiritual roots" as the innate hardware capacity of a system. "Cultivation" was the process of optimizing the software and improving the hardware's performance through repeated, correct use. Xiao Yue's failures were no longer just "leaks"; now they had names and causes. Her Sea of Consciousness was agitated by frustration, interfering with the fine control of Qi. Her Gate of Life was not opening correctly during the thrust, cutting off the energy supply from the dantian.
A month passed. Thirty days of silent observation. Thirty nights of intensive study. Every day, he saw the same cycle of effort, failure, and despair in the pavilion's clearing. His CEO's mind, his core as a perfectionist and optimizer, was being tortured. It was like watching the head of a high-potential department burn the company's budget on senseless projects, day after day. The inefficiency was so blatant, so painfully obvious, that it had become a personal offense.
Finally, he couldn't take it anymore.
It was a sweltering afternoon. The air was still. Xiao Yue was soaked in sweat, her face pale with exhaustion. She attempted the basic lunge for the umpteenth time. Her foot slipped on the damp grass, her wrist bent at the wrong angle, and the wooden sword slipped from her grasp, falling to the ground with a dull thud.
That was the end. She stared at the sword, her chest rising and falling with shaky breaths. Then, with a sob of pure rage, she kicked a loose stone with all her might, not caring about the pain in the toe of her shoe.
In that moment of total vulnerability, Kenji broke protocol. He left the food tray on the table, but instead of retreating, he took two steps toward the clearing. He stopped at a respectful but undeniable distance.
Kenji's voice cut through the garden's silence. It wasn't loud, but it was clear, calm, and devastatingly analytical.
"Your footwork is out of sync with your breathing. You're losing approximately 19% of your Qi before it even reaches the sword."
Xiao Yue froze. Her head whipped around to face him. For the first time, Kenji saw her head-on, and the impact was… significant. Her eyes, the color of molten gold, now shone with a mixture of surprise and unshed tears of frustration. They locked onto him with a fierce intensity.
The shock paralyzed her completely, a cascade of contradictory emotions. First, that a servant had spoken to her. Second, and far deeper, the humiliation. It wasn't a simple insult. It was a strange, clinical, impossibly specific critique. 19%? What did that even mean?
The anger at her own failure, the shame of being observed in her lowest moment, and the absolute bewilderment at the nature of the criticism left her speechless. She just stood there, her red hair like a still flame, her golden eyes fixed on him, with a stone in her heart and a thousand questions burning in her mind. Who, or what, was this boy?