The first stroke bled across the paper like a wave washing over sand—gentle, but irrevocable.

  Ren Lin’s wrist remained steady. The desk beneath her was uneven, its surface worn and splintered, but it couldn’t hinder the movement of her brush. Ink pooled and flowed, the bristles dancing freely in practiced rhythm. Each motion spoke of relentless discipline tempered by passion: curves, hooks, sweeping arcs—every character unfurled with deliberate grace, weighted with purpose.

  Poems, blessings, fragments of calligraphy—one after another, they spread across the bamboo sheets in elegant black lines. To the untrained, it might have looked effortless. But that was the trap.

  A master at an art could create extraordinary beauty even with limited tools. While for example an athlete was able to make a movement look effortless. Yet, if one tried to repeat it they would know their limits soon.

  This was true skill. This was where she was strongest—not in combat, nor politics, but in creation. She could take a blank page and make it worth more than gold.

  Ren Lin set down the brush and studied her work. An auspicious couplet meant for a doorframe. A blessing for health and fortune. A poem about love and loss.

  Things she had once written in another life to pass the time, now reborn as tools. In a kingdom where literacy itself was a privilege, her hand was an invisible weapon. She could mimic the lofty style of scholars, or the raw sincerity of a farmer praying for rain. Words could open doors as surely as stolen robes or tags.

  She leaned back in the chair, exhaling. The desk was small, the ink cheap, but the sight of the finished work steadied her more than food or coin.

  Tomorrow, she would take them to the market. A vendor’s stall, perhaps, just anywhere. Some place where her brush could earn her both silver and reputation.

  But tonight, the room smelled faintly of ink. Her breath still carried a hint of dumplings, as the once empty pages in front of her were filled.

  A soft yawn slipped from her lips as she lay down on the hard mat. Sleep came slowly. The dirt dug through the mat into her spine, and when morning broke, her back and neck were as stiff as pillars.

  Fortunately, Ren Lin knew stretches. On Earth she had used them daily—no special knowledge, just practical exercises. Here, though? How many in this world would know such modern methods to ease the body? The familiarity of movement grounded her, if only for a moment.

  Still, each day she wrestled with the same discomfort. The small luxuries of modern life haunted her. A private shower. A toilet she didn’t have to share. The thought of sitting on a communal pit or stepping into a bath beside strangers made her skin crawl. But what else could she do?

  To be a seller, one required an image. After all, the presentation was already half the craft.

  Putting on the slave rags, she went out.

  Not toward the Rising Mist—the bathhouse of cultivators was far beyond her means, and after her theft, she dared not step there again. That was the price of her choice, the shadow trailing her.

  Instead, she made for the mortals’ bathhouse. A place without fragrant oils, without jade lions or silk-robed attendants—just rough stone, heated water, and the chatter of common folk.

  It squatted between a butcher’s stall and a tanner’s shed, the air outside already soured with the smell of blood and wet leather. Ren Lin wrinkled her nose, but pushed inside.

  Heat hit her first—wet, heavy, clinging. Then the noise. A dozen conversations overlapping, punctuated by the slap of water against stone and the coughs of men and women who didn’t care who else was listening.

  The steam was thin, not fragrant but metallic, tinged with the faint sting of rust from overused pipes. A sour undertone lingered too—unwashed bodies that even hot water couldn’t mask.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  She didn’t need to pay anything. That was because slaves could bathe for free. They had no own money, so their masters would pay. One worker handed her a rag barely clean enough to call a towel. Ren Lin clenched her jaw, keeping her distaste from showing, and stepped further inside.

  The bathing room was a single pool carved into uneven stone, filled with cloudy water that steamed but never truly cleared. Too many bodies crowded it. Shoulders bumped against shoulders, knees brushed strangers beneath the surface. A girl no older than twelve scrubbed her mother’s back with a bundle of reeds, while on the other side two men argued loudly. The thin wall couldn’t contain it.

  Kneeling by the pool’s edge. The steam smelled faintly of iron and something else—old dirty skin. Supposedly, the water was “safe,” kept from festering by a low-grade cleansing core sunk somewhere beneath the basin. But safety wasn’t purity. This core could kill germs, not erase the grime left behind by hundreds of bodies.

  She dipped her rag, wrung it out, and began wiping herself down with caution, never allowing more contact with the water than absolutely necessary.

  A woman beside her dunked her entire head under, hair floating like tentacles. When she surfaced, she spat water back into the pool. Ren Lin’s hand stilled, a shudder went down her spine.

  But she had to force herself to continue. Image, she reminded herself. Cleanliness meant respectability. Respectability meant customers.

  By the time she finished she looked similar to her first day she appeared here: hair neat, skin clean, without carrying a particular scent.

  Outside the morning air lingered around. It felt pure as she drew in a deep breath steadying herself.

  After returning to the room she freed her body from the slave rags. The black robe caressed her skin again. While the stolen tag around her wrist jiggled as she picked up her papers and left.

  Ren Lin felt as though the bath she went through would pay off. She was very sanguine.

  Her goal wasn’t the nearest market. The tavern was too close, the chances of her meeting the cultivator she stole from were high. Not just that. But because of her unique looks he would be able to recognize her more easily.

  Therefore, she chose to go to a market further away.

  When she arrived there the sun hung past noon. The scene was a restless river: vendors shouting over one another, buyers bargaining fiercely, children weaving through legs, and the constant reek of sweat, fish, and dust.

  Ren Lin stood at the edge of a square where stalls leaned on another like drunken men. She unfolded her papers carefully, laying them across a broken crate she had found in the trash.

  She tucked bamboo papers under a wooden plank to prevent them from flying away.

  “Blessings, poems, auspicious words,” she called softly, her tone polite but steady. “Calligraphy for health, luck, or love.”

  A few glanced her way. Most didn’t.

  A butcher shouted louder from the next stall, hawking pork belly. A cloth-seller waved swaths of red fabric. A medicine peddler boomed about miracle tonics. Ren Lin’s voice was simply swallowed whole.

  She tried again, this time raising one sheet for display. The characters gleamed with clean ink, strokes full of breath and balance. She had written them as if for an emperor’s chamber.

  For a moment, a child tugged free of his mother’s hand and shuffled toward her table, eyes wide at the black, dancing strokes. His fingers reached out, just shy of brushing the paper.

  “Don’t touch that filth!” The mother hissed, yanking him back so roughly he stumbled. She shot Ren Lin a glare sharp enough to pierce, as if dirt might leap from the page to stain her son. “Wasting scraps and pretending to be better—pathetic.”

  Her words clung like a wolf’s bite. The boy twisted back to look at the papers once more, but his mother’s hand dragged him away into the crowd.

  The sheet in her hand felt suddenly heavier, as though it had turned to stone.

  No one else stopped.

  A man carrying grain brushed past, nearly knocking the sheet from her hands. A pair of women glanced over, frowned, and whispered—perhaps admiring, perhaps mocking, she couldn’t tell. Another passerby gave her a dismissive shake of the head before moving on.

  Ren Lin pressed her lips together. Her stomach reminded her with a hollow ache that she hadn’t eaten since yesterday. Yet, her gaze was fixed on her papers.

  Still, no one came.

  The sun crawled lower. The crowd thickened, then thinned again as afternoon passed. And with every hour, her voice grew quieter, until it was no more than a whisper lost in the chaos.

  At last, when shadows stretched long over the cobblestones, Ren Lin gathered her papers. Her throat was dry from calling. Her stomach was a fist of hunger. She left the market without a single coin.

  The walk back felt heavier than before, though her hands carried the same bundle they had brought. The robe at her shoulders was still fine, and the tag still shone dull bronze. The only thing that weighed more was her day; without food, without success.

  Her heavy door struggled to close behind her with its familiar groan. She placed the papers gently on the desk, smoothed the edges, and laid down.

  For a moment, she only listened—to the faint scratch of mice in the wall, to her own slow breathing.

  Her hunger gnawed, but she ignored it.

  Failure was just another line on the page. Tomorrow, she would write again. Tomorrow, she would try again.

  Success was just a game of chances.