Enshrined by a Bowl of Rice

Chapter 4: The Young Noble’s Welcome Gift

The bell jerked Chen Xifan off the stone bed. His first instinct was to reach for an alarm clock. His hand found cold stone instead.

Right. Not a convenience store shift. First day of school in another world.

He rolled over and sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, pressing his fingers against his temple. He’d slept badly. Three months of being hurled into other worlds had made him capable of sleeping through anything, including what was technically a pigsty — the problem was his brain. Three grains, one year, a three-thousand-year ration. The numbers had kept cycling behind his eyelids until the window outside had already gone grey with dawn.

The school uniform was thicker and coarser than the white enrollment robe, amber droplet patterns stitched at the collar. He spent a full two minutes fighting with the clasp — whatever civilization had designed this fastening system clearly had personal grievances against buttons.

When he stepped out of Dew Dormitory, Zao Xin was already waiting at the door.

“Morning!” Zao Xin’s volume at six in the morning had a particular quality — the kind that reached through walls without ever seeming to raise its voice. “I came early in case you couldn’t find the way! Oh, and the orientation ceremony is in the main hall of the teaching tower — you know, the big one up the slope — hey, why do you look so bad? Didn’t sleep?”

“Mm.”

“Me neither! Way too excited to sleep! Are you nervous? Don’t be nervous! I heard the ceremony is just the headmaster talking and then there’s an introduction to the various—”

“Let’s go.”

Zao Xin took the interruption in stride without missing a beat, switching topics mid-air as they made their way up the stone path along the hillside. Chen Xifan noticed that Zao Xin’s wooden rod was tucked at the back of his waist today, the carved side facing out — his grandfather had made it, with the family names cut into the wood.

The main hall of the teaching tower was larger than Chen Xifan had expected. A round stone vault, columns running floor-to-ceiling along the walls, every surface carved in runes he couldn’t read. Three or four hundred people stood inside, already sorted by dormitory into loose clusters — Fire Hall students packed into the far edge, Dew Hall in the middle, Grain Hall occupying the positions closest to the dais, everyone maintaining polite and carefully calibrated spacing.

Chen Xifan stood in the Dew Hall section. Zao Xin had wedged himself alongside — technically, as a Fire-kindler, he was supposed to be with Fire Hall. Zao Xin clearly did not register social hierarchies as a system that applied to him.

The headmaster said something from the stage. Chen Xifan didn’t catch much of it. He’d already classified it as the “welcome, study hard, honor the academy” template — swap the venue, swap the costumes, the content was always the same. His attention drifted to the Grain Hall section.

Then he saw the person.

Every other person in the Grain Hall section had dissolved into backdrop. One figure refused to.

There was one person standing there like a blade that had been cleaned — sharp by nature, indifferent to whom it might cut.

Seventeen or eighteen, posture straight, the school uniform fitting him with a precision three notches above everyone else’s. Black hair drawn back, every strand pressed flat. The deep-blue embroidery at his cuffs had been starched absolutely rigid; not a single crease existed.

Li Feng.

Chen Xifan didn’t know him, but the whispers around him had already delivered the name into his ear. First son of the Li family. Granary-keeper. The strongest new student the academy had seen in a century.

Then Li Feng turned his head.

Not looking at him. Scanning the whole section — but when the scan reached Chen Xifan, it stopped.

The pause was brief. Half a second, maybe. But half a second was enough. Li Feng’s brow shifted almost imperceptibly — the tiny adjustment a calibration instrument makes when it detects a reading it hadn’t predicted.

He started walking over.

Unhurried. The Grain Hall students parted automatically, like water moving around stone. Nobody stopped him; nobody greeted him — the idea of having the standing to do so simply didn’t occur to anyone.

He stopped three paces in front of Chen Xifan.

Chen Xifan looked up at him. Li Feng had half a head of height on him, but the pressure didn’t come from height — it came from those eyes. Pale gold irises, dry, still, stripped of anything extra, like a polished mirror whose only function was to reflect and sort.

“Your magic output is chaotic,” Li Feng said.

No greeting. No introduction. He hadn’t even glanced at the amber embroidery at Chen Xifan’s cuffs. His tone was flatly declarative. He was describing a fact that bothered him.

“Like a pot of badly cooked porridge.”

Chen Xifan blinked.

You’re the porridge. Your whole family is porridge.

He didn’t say it. When someone isn’t actually arguing with you, fighting back only makes it look like you’re the one starting a fight. Not a difficult concept.

”…And you are?” he asked.

Li Feng didn’t answer. Or in his understanding of things, the question didn’t require an answer — everyone was supposed to know who he was.

“Next time we meet,” Li Feng said, “I expect you’ll have learned to stand in the correct position.”

He turned and walked away.

Chen Xifan stood where he was and spent three seconds processing that. It wasn’t an insult. He could have handled an insult. This was — what? An assessment report? A recommended course of action?

Zao Xin materialized at his elbow, voice dropped to what Zao Xin considered a whisper — approximately the volume of a normal person in conversation: “That was Li Feng! From the Li family! Granary-keeper! Did he just talk to you? What did he say? Are you okay?”

“He said I’m porridge.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. Let’s go.”

---

After the ceremony, Chen Xifan headed down the stone steps toward Dew Dormitory. Zao Xin had been walking alongside him, but halfway down he got called away by the Fire Hall dormitory supervisor — “Zao Xin! Your bedroll fell out the window again!” “What? Again?” — and went clattering off.

The lamp-posts along the steps weren’t doing much in the afternoon sun; the amber light was mostly washed out. Chen Xifan walked with his hands in his pockets, still turning over what Li Feng had said. The correct position. What did that mean? That his rank as Dew-gatherer was wrong? Or did he just think anyone who wasn’t a Granary-keeper was in the wrong position?

He hadn’t finished the thought when the path blocked.

Three people. Positioned at the narrowest section of stone steps between Dew and Grain Hall. The one in front was wearing Grain Hall’s school uniform, deep-blue embroidery, with the kind of smile Chen Xifan had seen a thousand times — a smile aimed past you, with you as its material. That smile existed in every world.

“So you’re the Dew-gatherer Lord Li Feng personally walked over to address?” The leader looked him up and down. The words “Dew-gatherer” came out squeezed thin and acidic. “Lucky you — getting Lord Li Feng’s personal attention.”

Chen Xifan gave him a look. Grain-bearer. Three of them. He’d seen this formation plenty of times. In theory you were supposed to hold your ground. In practice you just wanted them to leave.

“Lord Li Feng doesn’t appreciate impurities in his vicinity.” The lackey continued, name-dropping “Lord Li Feng” in every sentence — if he stopped, he’d probably lose track of what he was saying altogether. “You’re in Dew Dormitory? That’s too high up for you. You should go to Fire Hall — voluntary demotion, you understand? Save Lord Li Feng the trouble.”

“Voluntary demotion,” Chen Xifan repeated, voice completely flat.

“That’s right. Voluntary.” The lackey put stress on the word and smiled wider. “Otherwise—”

“Hey hey hey!”

Zao Xin’s voice came barreling up from the steps below, followed by rapid footsteps and the tap-tap-tap of a wooden rod against stone. He’d apparently hung up his bedroll and sprinted uphill to find Chen Xifan. He was breathing hard, face flushed red.

“What’s going on here!” Zao Xin planted himself in front of Chen Xifan, rod braced across his chest, stance not quite textbook but the energy was very much there. “He’s a Dew-gatherer! You can’t force him to move—”

The lackey didn’t even look at him. He raised one hand and flicked.

A bolt of deep-blue light shot from his fingertip and hit Zao Xin square in the chest. Zao Xin went airborne, spine slamming into the low wall at the edge of the steps. The rod flew from his grip and clattered twice against the stone.

A Grain-bearer against a Fire-kindler was like turning a fire hose on a match.

Zao Xin slid down against the low wall until he was sitting on the ground, a thread of blood at the corner of his mouth. His left sleeve had torn open, exposing the skin of his arm — and the scars on it. Not today’s injuries. Old ones. Layers of them, healed over and split open and healed again, from many times before.

The steps went quiet for a moment.

Then Zao Xin lifted his head and grinned.

“I’m fine!” He sniffed and wiped the blood off with the back of his hand. “Doesn’t hurt!”

Doesn’t hurt. Chen Xifan looked at that grin. A reflex so practiced it had become automatic — the smile was already in position before his body had even finished landing. As if, if he smiled first, the whole thing wouldn’t count as having happened.

The lackey was still talking about something. Chen Xifan stopped listening.

He turned his head away from Zao Xin’s grin.

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll move.”

Three words. Quiet enough that no one in the crowd should have caught them — but the steps went silent for a beat.

The lackey blinked — he’d braced for many responses: begging, pushing back, bargaining. Fine wasn’t on the list.

”…You agreed?”

“You want me to move. I’m moving.” Chen Xifan walked past the lackey without a second glance. He went to where Zao Xin was sitting, crouched down, and reached out his hand.

The moment his palm closed around Zao Xin’s arm to pull him up, a faint flash of white light passed through the point of contact — gone so fast that no one caught it, including Chen Xifan himself.

Zao Xin was still muttering “really doesn’t hurt” as he came to his feet. Then his voice stopped.

He looked down at his own arm.

Those old scars — the ones that weren’t from today, the ones from before he’d come to the academy, the ones that had been struck over and over and healed over and split and healed again — were gone. The skin was smooth as if it had never been injured at all.

Zao Xin stood there open-mouthed, eyes moving from his arm to Chen Xifan’s face and back to his arm. His expression went blank for the first time — the kind of blank where a defense system crashes and reboots, nothing deliberate about it. He didn’t know whether to smile or cry or say something out loud. Someone had done something so far beyond the scale of his optimism that his response subroutines had no match for it.

Chen Xifan’s gaze settled on Zao Xin’s smooth arm. His pupils shrank slightly. He opened his mouth, then closed it.

“Don’t say anything about this.” He patted Zao Xin’s shoulder. His voice was quiet.

Zao Xin nodded. Then nodded again. His mouth moved a few times. In the end he squeezed out two words:

”…Thank you.”

Two quiet words, almost inaudible. All his usual noise had drained out of him.

The lackey stood up on the steps, watching Chen Xifan’s back as he walked away. Something felt wrong, but he couldn’t identify what.

He turned and headed back toward Grain Hall, muttering under his breath: “Lord Li Feng is going to be very pleased.”

Li Feng was in the cultivation room with his eyes closed, cycling his breath. He had no idea anyone had been harassing a Dew-gatherer in his name — just as he was unaware of the vast majority of things in this world done in his name.

---

Fire Hall was at the lowest level of the academy complex, half-sunk into the rock face at the mountain’s base. The ceilings in the connected stone chambers were low enough that you could touch them just by raising your arm. The windows were barely bigger than your hand; light had to squeeze in from outside, leaving a small, lopsided patch of brightness on the floor.

At the end of the corridor, beside the communal water basin, a crooked magic lamp threw dim red light across the wet stone walls, turning everything the color of raw meat. The air was a mix of sweat, cheap soap, and damp.

Chen Xifan put his things down on the assigned stone bed — things being, in reality, one spare school uniform he’d brought from Dew Dormitory. He sat on the edge of the bed and looked around.

“Works for me,” he said.

Zao Xin sat cross-legged on the adjacent bed, unusually quiet. He kept looking at his own arm, running his fingers again and again over the places where the scars had been.

Chen Xifan didn’t disturb him.

---

Late at night. The corridor in Fire Hall had gone quiet, leaving only the occasional sound of someone turning over in bed and the drip of the water basin. Chen Xifan waited until all the sounds had stopped, then sat up from his stone bed.

He didn’t put on shoes. Barefoot on cold stone, he felt his way along the corridor to the end and slipped out through a half-open side door.

The air behind the mountain was a completely different world from Fire Hall.

Damp earth and the faint sweet-and-sour smell of rotting leaves pushed into his nose; the coolness reached all the way down to his lungs. The canopy above shifted in the wind with a dry rustle, and the sound of insects rose from every direction, the kind that folded into the silence and made it heavier.

Moonlight filtered through gaps in the branches, sketching an intermittent silver line along the overgrown path.

Chen Xifan walked the path for a few minutes and stopped in front of a boulder twice his height.

He stood there for a while.

Three months. Three months in this world, he’d spent every day hiding, performing, finding the safest corner to crouch in. The crystal had shattered during the test — he knew it wasn’t a quality issue. He’d read the elders’ expressions too. Being forced to move to Fire Hall today, he hadn’t resisted, because resistance meant exposing his ability, and exposing his ability meant losing the only cover he had.

But he didn’t know how much ability he actually had.

He raised his right hand toward the boulder, palm facing forward.

“Basics only,” he said to himself. “Entry level. Testing the water.”

His palm lit up.

White light. Not dull red, not amber, not deep blue, not gold — white. Pure, clean white. The light welled from his palm without a sound, as silent as a candle being struck.

Then the boulder was gone.

Silent, immediate, leaving no fragments and no flying debris. An entire granite rock twice his height had, at the moment of contact with that white light, evaporated. Not even dust. The ground held only a smooth hollow, its edges fused flat as if exposed to extreme heat.

Chen Xifan’s hand froze in midair.

He stared at the hollow for a long time.

”…Okay,” he said, lowering his hand slowly. “Watch the output going forward.”

He said it in a perfectly steady voice. But his hand — the hand that had just released something of an unknown level — was shaking.

He crouched down. Beside the hollow, there was a small low-lying patch of ground with a shallow puddle and a thin line of spring water seeping along the edge. The soil had been softened by the water, its color deep and rich, carrying a scent he recognized — good soil.

He reached out and took a handful.

Sticky without clumping. His fingertips registered a faint warmth; there was life underneath the surface. He looked around — this low basin at the mountain’s base was enclosed on three sides by gentle slopes, open to the southeast. On a clear day it would catch most of the morning and midday sun.

“Good paddies need three things,” he murmured, crouching in the dirt, fingers turning the soil over. He sounded like he was talking to someone. “Stable water source, soil that’s sticky but doesn’t compact, and enough sun. Grandpa said that. That plot in Miaoli hit all three—”

He stopped.

He looked down at the soil in his hand. Then at the spring water. Then at the southeastern opening.

“This actually checks all three?”

His hand moved to the fold in his sash. His fingertips touched plastic — thirty grams, Chishang brown rice, sample pack. He pulled it out and looked at it.

In the moonlight, the word “sample” on the packaging caught a faint reflection.

He looked at it for three seconds, then tucked it back.

Not yet.

He stood, brushed the dirt from his knees, and turned back along the overgrown path. Barefoot on fallen leaves, he made almost no sound.

What he didn’t know was —

At the edge of a bamboo grove deeper in the back hills, a hunched figure stood in the dark.

Can Sui gripped his notebook, knuckles gone white. His eyes were fixed on the direction where the boulder had been, the afterimage of that white light still burning in his pupils.

He didn’t follow.

His hands were shaking. The shake of a linguist who had spent forty years translating dead texts, suddenly hearing someone speak in that language for the first time.

He opened his notebook and tried to write something. The pen nib hovered above the page three times. He couldn’t get a single word out.

The problem was where to begin. He had too much to say, and no starting point.

He closed the notebook and turned and disappeared into the bamboo.

Moonlight fell on the smooth hollow in the ground. The spring kept running. The insects gradually came back — as if the world had decided to pretend nothing had happened.

---

The academy notice board was updated the next morning. A document bearing the official seal had been posted in the most prominent spot:

New student evaluation. Three days hence. Rankings will determine resource quotas for the second half of the term.

A crowd had already gathered. The lackey from Grain Hall was at the front, voice loud enough to carry down the entire corridor: “Fire Hall trash thinks it gets to enter an evaluation? Waste of White Jade Soul Essence!”

He glanced back toward Fire Hall with a smile.

Chen Xifan didn’t go see the notice board. He was lying on his stone bed in Fire Hall, staring at the ceiling he could almost touch.

The shape of that hollow was still printed in his mind from last night. Entry level. He’d used entry level.

“Just got lucky” was the first thing that had ever stuck in his throat and refused to come out.