Hui threw himself through the library’s door and slammed it shut behind him. Someone thumped into the door, nearly throwing it open against his weight. Another few thumps rang out, and then the door laid quietly shut.

“Sir?” the librarian asked, half-standing. Long black hair hung over his shoulders. Half-moon pince-nez perched on the bridge of his nose, connected by a chain to his ear.

Hui let out a quiet laugh and raised a hand, asking for a moment. He pressed his back to the door for another few seconds, just to be sure. One last thump smashed the door into him. He dug his heels in. The weight against the door vanished.

The librarian frowned at him. He stood and stepped forward, a hand on his sword. “Sir? Are you in need of assistance?”

Hui waved him away. “To find a book, nothing more.”

Uncertain, the librarian settled back down. “Well… I suppose you’re in the right place for that. Let’s see, what do you have available to you…” He turned to a massive ledger sitting on his desk and hovered his hand over it. The pages flipped under his hand, rapidly turning to the correct page.

“I’m Xiao Hui, a small-time Foundation Building inner sect cultivator. I’m looking for a suitable cultivating manual,” Hui introduced himself.

“Ah, I see, Weiheng Hui,” the librarian said, cutting him off, “It seems like you have access to the first four floors of the library, with more available pending progression of your realm… eh, X-xiao Hui? But it says Weiheng Hui right here…” He frowned at his book.

“Er, yes, that’s, uh, that’s fine. The fourth floor, you say? Many thanks, fellow daoist.” He cupped his hands at the man and hurried off.

Suspicious, the librarian squinted after him.

Hui bustled away, turning the first corner he found. Coming face-to-face with a stairwell, he climbed up it, hurrying to the fourth floor. If the fourth floor is as high as I can go, I’m getting a manual off the fourth floor! No point wasting my time with lower-floor manuals.

The higher he climbed, the more qi thickened the air, until its weight pressed down on his shoulders. He forcibly stood upright and rolled out his shoulders, looking around him. I can’t see qi yet, but at a guess, this oppressive aura comes from the qi stored in these manuals, right? Impressive!

At the fourth floor, he peeked a look at the staircase to the fifth. Nothing blocked it off or prevented him from climbing. Hui turned slowly, pretending to check out the bookcases around him. As far as his eye could see, he was alone on the fourth floor.

It can’t hurt to look. Hui crept toward the staircase and put his foot on the first stair.

Immediately, intense pressure crashed down on his shoulders. Hui crumpled and barely caught himself before he struck the stairs. Forcing himself onward, he reached out to the next stair with his hands, intending to crawl up. The pressure slammed down on him, flattening him to the stairs. Hui reached a trembling hand upward, fighting the pressure with all his might.

“Fellow daoist, I believe I indicated that you could enter the first four floors, and no further,” the librarian said gently in his ear.

Hui snapped his head around. He was still alone in the library.

“Please leave the staircase, or you might cripple yourself.”

“Ah… right,” Hui panted, barely able to force the words out through the pressure. Cripple myself? No need to tempt fate more than once in a day. He slid backwards down the stairs like a slug, then jumped to his feet and dusted himself off. “My mistake. This poor disciple is bad at math, don’t you know?”

Silence was his only answer, a silence that somehow managed to convey the librarian’s judgmental gaze.

Hui bowed to the air and hurried off into the fourth floor. Don’t underestimate librarians, huh?

All around him, manuals lined up in neat rows on the shelves, spines outward, lovingly curated. Hui drew a few at random, flipped through them, and set them back. Most were unreadable, or rejected him outright, growing cold to the touch. Others listed the steps for magical, sword, plant, or other mysterious techniques, most of them barely comprehendible or obviously coded, but none of them drew his eye. He wandered along, tracing his fingers over the spines.

I hope I don’t have to go down a floor to find a manual I can use…

At the far end of the fourth floor, Hui turned a corner and found a final bookshelf tucked into a dusty corner, cluttered with books. Unlike the rest of the library, here books shoved against each other like a crooked-toothed smile. Every shelf was packed full of books from the top of its space to the bottom. Anywhere extra room opened up, a book had been forced into that space. Some had even been curled up or bent to fit. Bending at its seams, the rickety wooden shelf strained to contain the force of paper stuffed into its boundaries.

Hui tutted. “What is that librarian doing all day? Here, let this diligent disciple fix you…”

Taking the manuals in hand, he quickly reorganized the shelf. He laid folded manuals on the top of the shelf and placed weighty manuals atop them to flatten them, stacked the ones that couldn’t fit atop the shelf, to the left of the flattening process, and re-set the shelves so the remaining manuals all sat neatly upright instead of cluttering together in a jumbled mess.

Hui stepped back and wiped his brow. Surveying his work, he smiled. “Look at that. Good as new.”

He stepped back and trod on something behind him. Hui yanked his leg up and skittered away, only to find a manual lying on the ground. He frowned and bent to pick it up. “Did I miss one?”

In a hand-scrawled script, messy letters unlike the neat script of the other cultivators, the title declared: Defying Death, Defying Heavens.

On a whim, he flipped it open. Inside, the same scrawled script continued, words packed onto the page until it was almost black with them. Ink blots bled from the next page, contaminating the words on the page.

How’s anyone supposed to read that? Hui shook his head dismissively and started to close the manual.

Before he could, he felt something draw his eyes back to the page. The words twisted and reformed before him. Information flowed into his brain, images flashing before his eyes.

A practitioner sat before him, a bland, faceless man dressed in bland robes. He sat still, meditating. As he meditated, he drew his qi down to nothing, becoming a void, an empty space. Surrounding qi rushed into him, filling the void. Continuously, he killed his qi, gathering, killing, gathering, killing, until he finally released the technique. In his mind’s eye, the man stood, stretching his arms out, while an almost unlimited stream of qi flowed into him. A barrier snapped, and Hui understood: He passed out of Foundation Building into the third stage!

He stared at the manual, dumbstruck. This technique… was it custom-made just for me? I’ve already completed the first step in the manual… well, not at the Foundation Building level, but back in Qi Gathering! This—this is the perfect manual for me! I have to have it!

He flipped ahead, but the future pages remained cramped with narrow, unreadable text. No images flashed into his head or burst out of the pages. I must have to hit higher levels to comprehend these techniques.

Stuffing the manual into his borrowed robes, Hui sauntered back downstairs, pleased with himself. He gave the librarian a jaunty wave.

“Never fear. Many fellow daoists require dozens of visits to the library,” the librarian intoned dully.

“Huh? What do you mean?” Hui asked. He patted his chest. I’ve got a manual right here. I’m not coming back for a while.

The librarian peered dolefully over his glasses at Hui. He opened his mouth.

The door slammed open. Chang Bolin stood, outlined by the sunlight. “Librarian! I require—”

His eyes settled on Hui, and he stared. “What are you doing here?”

Hui waved, smiling. Internally, he suppressed a scream. Oh, shit! Time to hoof it!