The man smelled like fermented roots, old ash, and damp wool—like history left out in the rain too long.
"I've been watching you, boy."
Arion stood still as the beggar emerged from the shadows of the granary wall, his feet dragging through the dust like forgotten footsteps.
His eyes, buried beneath shaggy gray brows, sparkled with something Arion hadn't seen since his last life.
Calculation.
"You've no Spirit Root," the beggar rasped, wagging a finger, "but you see things. That makes you dangerous."
Arion didn't flinch. "Everyone says I'm useless."
"Good," the beggar grinned with a mouth half-toothed.
"Useless people live longer. They're beneath notice. The gods don't strike what they ignore."
Arion squinted. "You're not just a beggar."
The old man chuckled. "I was worse. I was a cultivator."
---
They sat beneath the shattered frame of a former storeroom, where rotting beams had collapsed into themselves years ago. No one came here. It was a place of decay—and thus, privacy.
The beggar poked at a rusted firepit with a stick. "What do you know of cultivation?"
Arion repeated what he'd heard from the villagers. Spirit Roots. Spirit Stones. Tempering the Body. Nourishing the Soul.
The beggar snorted. "Parrot words. You know what cultivation really is?"
Arion stayed silent.
"Cultivation," the beggar whispered, "is the madness of trying to tame the world inside you… while surviving the one outside."
He leaned close.
"Strength alone is the path of beasts. But those who think? Those who adapt? They become more."
---
Arion's eyes narrowed. "But I don't have a root. I can't even begin."
"You can't begin their way," the beggar corrected.
"But there are other ways. Forgotten ways. Ways that don't shine."
From a fold in his cloak, the beggar produced a rock—flat, scarred, and etched with symbols Arion couldn't read.
"I carved this before I bled my root dry," he said softly.
"It's nothing special. But it remembers things I forgot. Patterns. Pressure points. Muscle tension. Balance. Breathing."
He passed it to Arion.
"This is your first lesson: memory without qi."
---
That night, Arion didn't sleep.
He stared at the stone for hours, tracing its faint engravings with his thumb. They weren't just marks—they were rhythms. Like engineering blueprints without labels. Like poetry without words.
It was the first time in this world something felt familiar.
He could almost hear his past life whispering through the lines.
Not in language.
In structure.
---
The next day, Arion returned to the beggar.
"What do I call you?"
"Call me nothing," the old man replied.
"Names are for those who plan to be remembered."
"But I will remember you," Arion said simply.
The beggar blinked at him.
Then, he laughed—a real laugh, cracked and brittle.
"Fine," he wheezed. "Call me Kelan."
He paused.
"Only in whispers. Never in the open. Never where the others can hear."
"Why?"
"Because power invites attention. And attention invites death."
---
From that day on, Arion trained in secret.
Not in qi circulation or explosive strikes, but in tension lines, balance shifts, force redirection, breath timing.
Concepts not even the village's elder cultivators understood—ideas that matched Arion's scientific instincts.
Kelan didn't teach him how to glow.
He taught him how to move.
How to read a body.
How to predict intent.
By day, Arion was the boy with no future.
By night, he was something else—something slowly taking shape.
A shadow beneath the system.
---
One evening, as Arion practiced a three-step motion that mimicked a parry-into-grapple, Kelan watched in silence.
Then, he said, "You've seen fire before, haven't you? Not the kind that burns wood. The kind that moves in waves. Controlled. Contained."
Arion nodded slowly.
It was the first time someone in this world seemed to glimpse his past.
Kelan's voice dropped. "That fire lives in your memory. Use it. Shape it. Next time, I'll show you how to turn memory into method."