Bad news arrived with the sixth day of the survival mission.
One of the side walls of the hall gave way during the night. It did not collapse completely, but enough to fill the interior with dust, loose stones, and a very clear reminder that ruins did not patiently wait for a newborn sect to become ready.
Jian Mu was on his feet in an instant, branch-sword in hand.
"Are we under attack?"
"No," Gu Tian coughed through the dust. "The building simply shares my opinion of our situation."
Lin Yuan surveyed the damage quickly. They had lost a dry corner where they stored wood, and part of the side passage ceiling looked ready to follow.
The system appeared.
Survival mission: final day.
Warning: structural deterioration compromises progress.
Suggestion: obtain basic repair materials or fail initial stabilization.
Lin Yuan closed his eyes for one breath. Then he made a decision.
"We're going down to the market."
Jian Mu looked up. "All three of us?"
"No. You stay."
The boy tensed at once. "I can go."
"Exactly why you are staying. Someone has to guard the hall, the water, and the dried meat. Besides, you still don't know how to walk among people without looking like you're ready to stab someone."
Gu Tian laughed dryly. "The founder learns quickly."
Jian Mu did not like it, but he obeyed. That was new too.
Lin Yuan and Gu Tian went down a worn path that connected to a smaller market south of Dry Stone, a meeting point for woodcutters, hunters, laborers, and dealers in used things. Lin Yuan did not want to return to the village yet. Not after the square. Not after the looks. This market was more anonymous and, for that reason, less forgiving.
They carried the little they could sell or trade: cleaned wolf pelts, a few preserved eggs, and a carved stone Gu Tian claimed was worthless... though some superstitious fool might buy it if he stared long enough.
The market smelled of smoke, sweat, and old oil. There were bird cages, patched tools, sacks of grain, plow pieces, hanging herbs, and men with the gaze of people who measured everything according to their own hunger.
Lin Yuan did not enjoy the visit.
The merchants saw his poor clothes, the untrustworthy old man beside him, and the lack of escort or backing. They tried to pay less. They tried to cheat on measures. They tried to sell damp wood, worn rope, and adulterated salt.
To Lin Yuan's surprise, Gu Tian proved excellent at arguing prices whenever it suited him.
"If you are going to cheat me," he told a bald man in front of a pile of boards, "at least use a new lie. I heard that one back when I had fewer wrinkles than grudges."
In the end they got just enough: strong rope, ordinary iron nails, a thick canvas, a small sack of grain, and two long boards to reinforce the broken wall.
They were about to leave when Lin Yuan heard shouting from the far side of the market.
Not the shouts of men fighting.
The shouts of someone used to not being heard.
He followed the sound and found a scene that chilled his chest in a different way. Beside an old cart, a plump man in collector's clothes was arguing with a thin girl no older than fifteen or sixteen. She was pale, her clothes plain but clean, her hands clenched against her chest, and her eyes bright with restrained anger.
"Your family cannot pay," the man said. "Debt does not vanish just because you look too proud for it."
Beside them sat an empty wooden cage.
Gu Tian halted mid-step. "Not our business."
Lin Yuan said nothing.
The girl was not crying. That caught his attention. She was trembling, yes, but she kept her back straight even when the man seized her arm roughly.
"If your uncle won't pay," the collector said, "you'll pay by working."
The system activated.
Target detected: secondary talent of high compatibility.
Affinity: support, healing, basic refinement.
Current state: risk of loss.
Lin Yuan clenched his jaw.
Gu Tian looked sideways at him. "Do not make that face."
"What face?"
"The same one you had when you picked up Jian Mu."
Lin Yuan looked at the girl again. For one instant, she also raised her eyes and met his. He saw no plea there. He saw something worse.
Proud humiliation.
The kind a person knows too well when he has felt it himself.
"We still don't have enough resources to save everyone," Gu Tian muttered.
Lin Yuan knew that. He knew it perfectly.
But he knew something else too: sects are not born only from roofs and stone. Sometimes they are born from deciding, at the most inconvenient possible moment, what kind of people you will allow to be lost.
It took them almost the entire morning to clear the stones from the collapsed wall. Jian Mu carried blocks too heavy for his age, and Gu Tian cursed every time he found old plaster crumbling into dust. Lin Yuan worked beside them until sweat ran down his back despite the cold. They were not rebuilding a dignified structure; they were preventing the wind from claiming what little still stood.
It was beneath a broad slab of fallen wall that Gu Tian found the first clear trace: three curved lines carved into a plate of stone darker than the rest. It was not decoration. Even Jian Mu understood that when the old man stopped joking. Lin Yuan crouched beside him and ran his fingers over the relief. The medallion, hidden beneath his robe, answered with a faint warmth.
And so he stepped toward the cart.