The next morning, Lin Yuan made Jian Mu repeat the same movement more than a hundred times.
The boy hated it.
He did not say so aloud; he said it with the tightness in his jaw, with the rough way he seized the branch, with the shadow of impatience that hardened his eyes every time Lin Yuan corrected the placement of his foot or the angle of his elbow.
"Again," Lin Yuan said.
Jian Mu exhaled through his nose and repeated the slash.
"Wrong."
"Again."
He did it a second time.
"Better breathing. Worse shoulder."
"Again."
Gu Tian watched from a broken pillar, chewing on a root as if he were a paying spectator at a show built on other people's suffering.
"At this rate," he commented, "the boy will master patience before he masters the sword. Which, to be honest, would be the greater miracle."
Lin Yuan did not even look at him. "If you want to help, then help."
"I already am. My presence makes your methods look gentle by comparison."
Jian Mu botched the next step and nearly lost his balance. Lin Yuan moved before thinking, pressed two fingers between the boy's shoulder blades, and let the founder's basic authority—one of the strange functions the system had unlocked—respond for an instant.
It was not a transfer of power. It was a precise correction.
He felt the boy's clumsy flow, the way his breathing locked before the movement was completed, the stiffness with which he held the air as if the world might steal it. He guided the posture with the smallest adjustment. Jian Mu froze.
"Now," Lin Yuan said.
The boy made the slash.
The branch cut through the air with a different kind of cleanliness.
Jian Mu blinked in surprise. He looked at his hands, then at Lin Yuan. "I felt it."
"Then remember how it felt," Lin Yuan replied. "I can't correct you every time."
Gu Tian stopped chewing his root for a moment. There was still mockery in his eyes, but there was also something more alert. Appraising.
Later, when Jian Mu went to fetch water, the old man moved closer to the stretch of unearthed formation lines.
"You did not just choose your first disciple well," he said without looking away. "The system also chose its founder well."
Lin Yuan remained silent.
"Do not get excited," Gu Tian added. "I still think this could end very badly."
"Do you know what kind of formation it is?"
The old man lowered his head. "Not completely. But I know this much: it was not some domestic protection array. The scale of the lines, the depth of the carving, the kind of stone... this belonged to an important structure."
Lin Yuan touched one of the edges. The medallion warmed again.
Gu Tian noticed.
"That necklace of yours reacts too much to be a simple keepsake."
Lin Yuan lifted his gaze. "Can you identify it?"
"No. And that irritates me."
The old man let out a slow breath and pointed at three different places around the hall.
"There are more traces buried there, there, and there. If we clear them properly, we may find the larger circuit. But activating something of that scale will take materials, energy, and understanding. At the moment, we have very little of all three."
Jian Mu returned with the water shortly after, and the training continued until the sun stood high. The boy ended up sweating, breathing with rage, but when he repeated the sequence one last time, it came out less clumsy. Not elegant yet. But less broken.
That night, the system issued another update.
Survival phase: acceptable progress.
Founder-disciple bond: stabilization underway.
New recommendation: obtain basic materials for repair and defense.
Lin Yuan read the final line twice.
"We need to go down to the market," he said.
Gu Tian grunted. "Of course. Because nothing strengthens the spirit of a newborn sect quite like begging for supplies from people who still think you'll die before winter."
"We won't be begging."
Jian Mu looked up from the corner where he was reviewing the manual. "Then why are we going?"
Lin Yuan held the boy's gaze. "To learn how much it costs to build something real."
He said no more.
But that night, while the fire sank into embers and the medallion rested cold against his chest, he had the strange feeling that the mountain itself was watching them in return. As if the ruins beneath their feet had not fully awakened, but had stirred just enough to judge them.
And Lin Yuan knew that the sect had ceased to be a mere idea born from rejection.
When Jian Mu failed for the hundredth time, the training branch trembled slightly between his fingers. Lin Yuan saw it before the boy could hide it. It was not physical fatigue alone. It was frustration. Jian Mu wanted an edge that promised immediate vengeance, not a movement repeated until boredom. Gu Tian, seated in the shade, let out a dry laugh when he noticed the scene.
"Broken children always think training means learning to kill quickly," the old man muttered. "The ones who survive later discover that training means learning not to break at the first blow." Jian Mu looked up with tightly contained fury. Lin Yuan, however, took the phrase and drove it straight into the center of his chest. "Again," he said. "Until your arm stops moving out of rage and starts moving out of will."
Now it was a wager.