My shizun was a steadfast warrior. He didn’t blink when he killed my former master and slaughtered the whole demonic sect, didn’t falter when he brought me to his mountain peak under the yelling of his own sect elders. He was an ice-cold, infallible cultivator. Nothing could shake him.

Except, apparently, having me as a disciple.

Shizun sat in front of me, his eyes shut tight. I said to him, “Sorry, shizun.”

Between us, on the table, was an open scroll filled with the plans shizun had for teaching me, written out in a gorgeous and packed calligraphic script. It lay there abandoned. “No need for apologies.” Shizun composed himself. He opened his eyes with a serene, placated calm, rolled up the scroll, and put it back within his sleeves. “We will proceed a different way.”

He then asked me to hold out my hand and allow him to investigate my meridians. Shizun’s fingers were warm and steady as they pressed over my wrist. His brows furrowed. He seemed to sense something bad in me.

He said, “Circulate your energy.”

I did so.

A baffled expression arose on his face. “Why is there nothing in your head?”

“……..” I took a sudden blow. Shizun was truly the most powerful cultivator I’d ever met; with just a sentence, he murdered me.

“Of the three internal energies, you have accumulated great stores of essence and breath, yet none of the mind,” he explained. “Jing, qi, shen; jing is bodily essence, qi is vital breath, shen is spiritual awareness. Your body is full of essence and vitality, yet without the spiritual awareness, you will be unable to understand the ways of the Dao.” He reached out and tapped his fingers at the side of my head. “I sense a formation in your mind. This may be one of the causes. Once we break the formation, the natural flow of your energy will resume, and you will be able to cultivate.”

I nodded. “Shizun, there’s something else in my head. A cultivation technique. Whenever someone with yang energy who’s not my master touches me, it activates…”

“Worry not. I shall teach you self-control.” Shizun patted my head, his eyes holding reassurance and care. “It is good to have a method to defend yourself. One day, you will know much more, and will no longer have to rely on things of the past.”

For the rest of the day, shizun and I sat together while he read a book to me.

We brought seat cushions to the wooden deck overlooking the bamboo grove at the back of the house. With the gentle breeze and rustling bamboo accompanying his voice, shizun read aloud a book about the principles of Daoism. I enjoyed the sound of shizun’s deep and comforting voice, even though the content of energies and the way of the universe wasn’t all that exciting.

I leaned against shizun’s side, a hand curled on his sleeve. Shizun paused, then angled the book so that we could both look at it together. I felt very small at his side, like a little chick under the wing of an eagle.

Later, when the sun began to set, shizun sent me to rest. Tomorrow, he would figure out his new course for teaching me.

I had tried to sleep, but found myself restless. In the end, I went back outside to the deck and sat directly on the wood. Swinging my feet back and forth, I watched the moonlight filter through the leaves of the bamboo grove, and I pondered my current situation.

When I told shizun I couldn’t read, why did he look so troubled?

Both shizun and shixiong seemed to think there was something strange about all the things I didn’t know. It didn’t make sense to me. I was a furnace. Wasn’t it normal that I wasn’t like a person?

When it came to cultivation, it couldn’t be said that I was completely unenlightened. Although I couldn’t properly be called a cultivator, I had undergone training and knew the basics of what shizun had read to me today: every living being in the world contained qi, life energy, and it was the accumulation of this energy that lead to a cultivator’s strength.

However, while I could accumulate energy, I was never meant to develop it for my own use. All of my training revolved around granting as much benefit to my master as possible. I had never learned to truly cultivate.

The only technique instilled in my mind was a self-defense mechanism. It activated whenever anyone with yang attributes, other than my master, attempted to touch me. It hadn’t been formally taught to me as something I could control. It was one of those things where one day, the trainers imparted it into my mind. From then on the weight of that technique sat in my brain, occupied my head even though I couldn’t understand it.

There were many things deemed unnecessary for me to know. The control of this technique, the process of using my stored energy to cultivate myself.

Along with that, knowledge of how to read.

It wasn’t as if I had needed to. Whenever I wanted to enjoy a book, all I had to do was direct a servant to read to me.

The stewards had taken great care to only select the finest of books for me: tales of luxury and decadence, romance and valor. Often the books featured young men and women who lived lavish lives in service of their emperors, their princes, their lords; they vied for their master’s affection, fending off the competition to prove themselves the most worthy, the most capable, and the most deserving of love and attention.

I adored listening to these books. Hearing the tales of courageous, sharp-minded, but steadfast protagonists inspired me and gave me direction for what I wanted in life. I wanted to prove myself to my master, the same way they did; so even when I had to go through the most painful parts of my training, I reminded myself that I could get through it, just like those characters in the books. I imagined how proud my master would be of me when he saw just how competent and excellent I was as a furnace. I had wanted to live up to the expectations everyone had of me.

Stories had a huge influence on my life. They fascinated me and taught me about so many things I could never even imagine.

It was just too bad they were hidden inside books.

I remember once, at night, after the servants had withdrawn, I had secretly gotten out of bed to find the book they had read to me. The servants had stopped right at the high point where the protagonist was about to confront the villain who had suppressed her all throughout the beginning of the book. I absolutely had to know what happened next—was the heroine going to win? Was she going to show that villainess who the real mistress of the palace was?—so I pulled out the book and sat next to the dim, flickering light of the brazier to find out.

But when I opened the pages of the book, all I saw were strange, black scribbles.

I couldn’t understand anything at all.

I remembered the empty shock in my heart. I stared blankly at the pages.

Where was the story?

The vivid world of the imperial palace—the gorgeous brocade and glistening jade, the tinkling of the concubines’ head ornaments, the fast-paced banter of women fighting with words sharpened to swords. The magnificence of this other existence, so real in my head that I stood in the imperial courtyard and felt it all happening around me when I closed my eyes—was gone.

The ink was like a gate slammed shut in my face. Beyond it was that mystical life I wanted to experience, the tales of other people and other places that took me beyond the four walls of the bedroom. People who could read could unlock the portal to enter that other world.

But I didn’t have the key.

I was trapped here in front of the iron door, empty-handed.

Every mark, each many-legged splotch of ink said to me: you will never be able to leave your place.

I was terrified. My hands shook, and for a moment, I wanted to throw the book into the brazier to hide all evidence. But I swallowed it down, put the book away, and quietly went back to bed.

A good furnace didn’t read.

I was a good furnace.

Now I was in Cloud Peak, and I was shizun’s disciple.

And shizun had looked sadly at me when I said, “I don’t understand what these letters mean.”