My dao to eternity

The notice about the associate contributors stayed pinned to the sect gate for another month before someone finally took it down, and by then Li Fan had already stopped thinking about it in any way that mattered. He returned to Old Mu's shop the morning after he'd made his decision and picked up where he'd left off, a half-finished box lid waiting on the bench exactly where he'd set it down.

Old Mu didn't ask what he'd decided. He glanced once at Li Fan's hands, saw them settle back onto the chisel with no new hesitation in them, and said nothing more about it. That, more than any question could have, told Li Fan the old man had already guessed the answer before he'd walked through the door.

The days that followed carried no particular weight to them. He woke before the sun most mornings, ran through the Primordial Stances in the training room while the light outside the shuttered window turned from black to grey, then worked the sword forms until his breath came even and his grip no longer needed conscious thought to hold correctly. The courtyard's dirt had long since worn smooth beneath his bare feet in the places he stood most often, a shallow path he'd cut into the earth without ever meaning to.

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