Cultivation starts with picking up attributes

Morning broke slow in the orchard, light catching on the dew-beaded branches, turning them to strands of glass.

The Scouts stirred at their usual rhythm — Ji Luan checking the perimeter, Little Mei coaxing the fire to life, Drowsy already circling above in a slow, lazy arc. It could have been any other day. That was the trick of it.

Tian Shen rose with the sun, as always, yet something in him resisted the movement. He lingered by the low wall they had built for drying fruit, fingers resting on the warm stone, gaze traveling the length of the trees.

They had worked so hard to make this place more than a camp — a haven — and now, in the air, he felt the faintest pull of an ending.

Feng Yin noticed. She always did.

"You're watching it like a man watching the tide go out," she said, voice gentle as she joined him.

"Maybe I am," Tian Shen replied. "Or maybe I'm just trying to remember the shape of it before we're somewhere else."

She followed his gaze over the rows. The orchard had changed them, each in their own way. The constant labor had made Ji Luan's movements less restless, more rooted. Little Mei had stopped counting days.

Even Drowsy seemed calmer, her wings less quick to tense. And for Tian Shen himself… he'd found a rhythm that did not come from battle or orders.

They spent the morning as they always did: tending, training, cooking. But even those motions felt like they were being memorized.

...

By midday, Tian Shen took the Scouts into the western clearing for drills. They worked in pairs — silent hand signals, flanking movements, the quick recovery from a fall. It wasn't the most intense training, but every gesture was deliberate. When they finished, he had them form a loose circle.

"Tomorrow," he said, "we break routine. The orchard's been good to us, but it was never meant to be a fortress. We leave it standing, but we can't be here forever."

No one argued. Ji Luan nodded once. Little Mei looked at the dirt but did not frown. Drowsy, perched on the branch above, gave a soft, low rumble, as if she too understood.

...

That night, the air was different — cooler, touched with the faint scent of rain. Tian Shen sat beneath the lantern tree again, but his scroll remained untouched. Feng Yin brought two cups of tea, setting one beside him before sitting cross-legged on the grass.

"You've decided," she said, not asking.

"I have. The orchard will be here for others. We'll move on."

Feng Yin sipped her tea. "The Scouts will follow. They've learned that's what we do."

A silence passed between them, broken only by the sway of leaves. Then Tian Shen spoke again, quieter.

"I thought staying here might give them something more than orders. A place to return to."

"It has," she said. "Even if we never see it again, they'll carry it."

...

Far from the orchard, a barefoot figure moved through the shallows of a river, trailing pale ripples in moonlight. He knelt at the bank and dipped a hand into the current, watching it swirl away.

His other hand traced lines in the mud — not random, but deliberate sigils, the kind meant to travel unseen until they reached their mark.

When he was done, he pressed his palm flat to the earth. The ground trembled faintly, like something had stirred far below. He looked up toward the dark horizon, toward where the orchard lay beyond ridges and valleys. And he smiled without warmth.

...

At dawn, the Scouts gathered without needing to be called. They had packed what they could carry, leaving the rest as offerings to whoever might find this place next.

Little Mei tucked a ribbon into the branches of the lantern tree. Ji Luan buried a pouch of dried fruit beneath the roots of a young sapling.

Feng Yin took one last walk down the central path. She trailed her fingers over the bark, remembering each tree they had planted, pruned, defended. When she returned, Tian Shen was waiting at the gate they had fashioned from salvaged wood.

"No regrets?" he asked.

She shook her head. "No. Only gratitude."

They stepped out together. The orchard faded behind them, swallowed by distance and the shifting weave of the forest. Ahead, the road bent toward low hills, and beyond that, whatever the world still had waiting.

...

By midday, the orchard stood empty. The wind moved through it like a careful hand, stirring the leaves but not breaking the silence. A jay landed on the lantern tree, cocked its head, and then flew off again.

Beneath the soil, the sigils carved by the barefoot figure had begun their slow spread, threads of unseen intent weaving toward the roots.

The orchard would not be the same when they returned — if they returned at all.

But for now, Tian Shen and Feng Yin walked onward, the Scouts at their side, their steps steady in the face of whatever came next.

...

The forest closed in quickly after they left the orchard. The wide paths they had worn through weeks of tending were replaced by narrow deer trails, roots twisting like the veins of an old hand.

The Scouts moved in practiced order — Ji Luan at the front, eyes flicking from shadow to shadow, Little Mei between Feng Yin and Tian Shen, Drowsy a flicker of movement above.

By midday, the hills rose before them, layered in soft gray mist. The air here was heavier, tasting faintly of iron. Even the wind seemed reluctant to pass through.

They stopped to rest beside a split boulder, half-covered in moss. Tian Shen leaned against the stone, scanning the treeline. He felt it again — that quiet pull in the air, the same one he had sensed in the orchard's final days. It was faint, but it lingered like the memory of a scent.

Feng Yin noticed his stillness.

"It's following us?" she asked.

"Not yet," he said. "But the ground remembers more than the trees do."

...

They moved on, descending into a narrow valley. Here, the canopy was so thick that sunlight fell only in thin, shifting stripes. In those slivers, motes of dust hung motionless, as though even time hesitated.

Little Mei broke the quiet first.

"Do you think anyone will find the orchard?" she asked, not looking at anyone in particular.

"Yes," Tian Shen said. "And I hope they're ready for what it's become."

Ji Luan glanced back at that, a question in his eyes, but didn't speak.

...

That night, they camped by a stream whose banks were thick with night-blooming flowers. The petals gave off a faint blue glow, enough to paint their faces in shifting light.

Drowsy perched on a low branch, head tucked but eyes half-open. Ji Luan kept watch on the western side, where the valley opened into darkness. Feng Yin sat by the fire, repairing a strap on her bracer.

Tian Shen sat a little apart from them, watching the water. The stream's surface was restless, rippling though no wind stirred it. He reached down, fingers brushing the surface — and froze.

The water was warm.

He looked upstream, into the pitch-black curve of the valley, and for an instant he thought he saw the barest flicker of silver light, as though the moon had been caught beneath the surface. Then it was gone.

...

They traveled faster the next day, cutting a straighter path toward the pass that would lead them into the outer ranges.

The mist thinned, but the sense of being observed grew stronger. It was not the gaze of a predator — sharp and hungry — but something patient, like a hand waiting to close.

By afternoon, the pass was in sight — a narrow cut in the mountains, framed by jagged cliffs. Snow clung to the higher peaks beyond, though the air here was still warm.

Tian Shen halted the group at the entrance. "From here on, we move without sound," he said. "If you hear anything that doesn't belong — stop, and let me see it first."

They moved through single-file. The walls of the pass were so close in places that they could have touched both sides at once.

Halfway through, a single stone clattered down the cliff face to their right. Everyone froze.

No one had touched it.

...

The sound echoed for longer than it should have, vanishing only when the air stilled completely. Then, very faintly, another sound followed — not from above, but beneath them.

A slow, deliberate scrape.

Tian Shen shifted his grip on the spear. "Move," he said quietly. They did.

They didn't stop until the pass opened onto a high plateau, the air suddenly sharper, colder.

From here, they could see the valley they had left — a green shadow between ridges — and far in the distance, the faint glint of the orchard's canopy.

For a moment, no one spoke. Then Feng Yin stepped up beside him.

"It's still ours, in a way," she said.

He nodded once, but his eyes stayed on the horizon. "Until the day it calls us back."

And in the quiet that followed, the wind carried a whisper from far below, soft enough that only Tian Shen seemed to hear it — the sound of roots shifting in the dark.