The echo of the experience lingered, not as a memory recalled, but as a subtle shift in the very fabric of Wen Xuan’s perception. The dust motes dancing in the lamplight seemed less random now, their paths tracing invisible currents in the stagnant air. The silence of the Repository wasn't empty; it felt… attentive, as if the countless objects surrounding him were holding their breath, listening. He carefully placed the plain wooden box containing the broken dummy core back onto the shelf, deeper this time, behind a stack of crumbling ledgers bound in cracked leather. A secret kept, not out of strategy yet, but out of a profound, instinctual need to shield this bewildering event from the mundane world.

  His heart rate had slowed, but a tremor persisted in his hands. He took several deep, steadying breaths, the familiar dusty air doing little to clear the phantom sensations – the jolt of impact, the stubborn will within the glassy core. He forced himself back to the task at hand. Elder Fei. The Sunken Moon inkstone. Hao Jie’s impatient, contemptuous face swam before his mind’s eye, a stark contrast to the ancient, fractured feeling he’d just touched.

  With renewed, almost desperate diligence, he resumed his search along shelf Theta. He picked up another inkstone, this one oblong and unusually heavy. As he wiped it clean, his fingers automatically registered the texture – smoother here, rougher there – but his eyes, now strangely keen, caught something else. Not on the inkstone itself, but on the floor directly beneath where it had rested.

  He knelt, holding the lamp lower. The stone floor was thick with undisturbed dust, save for the clean rectangle where the inkstone had sat. But within that rectangle, almost perfectly obscured by the inkstone’s footprint, was a faint wear pattern. It wasn't the random scratching of careless placement. It was a series of fine, parallel grooves, shallow but distinct, leading towards the back of the shelf, towards the cold stone wall. It looked as if something heavy, with a rough or perhaps metallic base, had been repeatedly dragged out from under this specific inkstone, scraping lightly against the floor each time before being lifted.

  Wen Xuan traced the grooves with a fingertip. They were faint, easily missed. Anyone else, even Hao Jie with his superior cultivation, would likely overlook them entirely, dismissing them as imperfections in the stone or random damage. But Wen Xuan, attuned now to the subtle language of the Repository, saw intention. Why hide something behind a heavy, unremarkable inkstone? What object, heavy enough to leave grooves, required such careful, repeated access in this forgotten corner? He glanced towards the back of the shelf, probing the deep shadows with his lamplight. Nothing but rough-hewn stone wall was visible. No obvious compartment, no hidden drawer. Yet the floor whispered a different story.

  He made a mental note – Shelf Seven-Theta, fourth position from the left – and forced himself to move on. The mystery was a hook, pulling at his newfound curiosity, but Elder Fei’s impatience, channelled through Hao Jie, was a more immediate concern.

  He continued along the shelves, moving towards Kappa. The air here grew even damper, the scent of mildew sharp and pervasive. He passed a tall, narrow rack leaning against the wall, filled with ancient, rusted polearms – halberds with chipped blades, glaives whose wooden shafts were riddled with wormholes, spears tipped with pitted, dull points. They were relics, museum pieces at best, useless artifacts taking up space. Most disciples wouldn’t give them a second glance, associating them only with decay and obsolescence.

  As Wen Xuan passed, lamp held aloft, a different scent snagged his attention, cutting faintly through the dominant odours of dust and mould. It wasn't strong, just a lingering trace, metallic and slightly oily, but clean. It was the smell of honed steel carefully wiped down, perhaps treated with a specific type of preservative oil – an oil far finer than the crude grease sometimes used on the sect’s functional training equipment. It clung faintly to the air around the weapon rack, strongest near a particular halberd whose blade, despite the rust elsewhere, seemed to have a slightly less corroded edge, almost as if it had been recently handled, perhaps even sharpened and then deliberately re-dulled or coated to blend in.

  He stopped, frowning. Why would anyone tend to these ancient, forgotten weapons? The sect armoury, meagre as it was, held the functional equipment. These were historical junk. Unless… unless someone needed a weapon discreetly. Or perhaps someone was practicing ancient weapon forms, using the genuine article for… authenticity? It felt incongruous, another thread of quiet activity running counter to the narrative of neglect. It hinted at hidden efforts, at preparations made in shadow, within a sect that publicly seemed barely able to maintain its basic structures.

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  The sect was declining. Wen Xuan saw the evidence every day. Fewer disciples attended morning lectures. The quality of the rations in the outer disciple mess hall had noticeably decreased over the last year. Repairs to essential structures were often delayed or done poorly. Elder Shen, who oversaw outer disciple training, seemed more weary and distracted than usual, his instructions often vague. Rumours circulated of promising inner disciples leaving for larger, more prosperous sects, of strained finances, of dwindling spiritual resources in the mountain range itself. The Falling Star Sect felt like an old tree shedding its leaves, its roots struggling in depleted soil. Yet, here were faint whispers of something else – hidden compartments, secretly maintained relics. Desperation? Preparation? Secrets layered thick as the dust?

  He finally reached the Kappa shelves. And there, tucked away on a lower shelf, half-hidden by a pile of broken writing slates, was an inkstone that matched the description. Dark, almost black stone, heavy and cool, with the characteristic faint, silvery flecks deep within its polished surface, like captured moonlight in a midnight pool. A small, stylized carving of a comet – the Falling Star Sect’s emblem, albeit an older version – was etched subtly on one side. This had to be it.

  Relief warred with reluctance. Finding the inkstone meant leaving the Repository’s quiet mysteries and facing the sect’s mundane, often grating, reality again. He carefully wrapped the Sunken Moon inkstone in a spare piece of clean cloth he kept for such purposes and retraced his steps, his lamp casting flickering shadows that now seemed pregnant with unspoken questions. The wear pattern, the scent of clean steel – these details clung to his mind, more persistent than the dust clinging to his clothes.

  As he approached the main entrance hall, the heavy oak door creaked open again before he reached it. Hao Jie stood there, arms crossed, foot tapping impatiently on the dusty floor. His expression soured further as he saw Wen Xuan emerge from the gloom.

  "Finally! Took you long enough, dust-grubber. Did you fall asleep back there? Or were you trying to memorize the patterns in the mildew?" Hao Jie’s voice echoed slightly in the large space.

  Wen Xuan silently held out the wrapped inkstone. "I believe this is the Sunken Moon inkstone Elder Fei requested, Senior Brother Hao."

  Hao Jie snatched it from him, unwrapping it carelessly. He squinted at it in the dim light filtering from the doorway. "Hmph. Looks about right. Suppose even a blind rat finds a grain sometimes." He didn't offer a word of thanks. "Don't think this makes you useful, though. Wasting hours finding one rock while the rest of us are actually cultivating, contributing."

  He gestured dismissively at Wen Xuan’s dusty robe and the grime on his hands. "Look at you. You practically live in this dump. Elder Fei was getting annoyed. If I hadn't come back to check, you'd probably still be back there counting cobwebs."

  Wen Xuan lowered his gaze, murmuring, "My apologies for the delay, Senior Brother." It was the expected response, the path of least resistance. Openly contradicting Hao Jie, even correcting his assumptions, would only lead to trouble – extra chores, verbal abuse, perhaps even a physical ‘lesson’ disguised as a spar later. His low cultivation base offered no defence against such things.

  But even as he offered the deferential reply, Wen Xuan’s newly sharpened senses picked up other details. Hao Jie’s own boots, sturdy sect-issue leather, were scuffed not just with dust, but with fine, reddish grit – the type found near the steeper cliffs on the western training peak, an area usually reserved for more strenuous, advanced practice. And beneath the faint scent of sweat, there was a whiff of ‘Ironbone Liniment,’ a potent, expensive salve used to soothe severely strained muscles and micro-fractures in bone, usually only affordable or accessible to inner disciples pushing their limits. Was Hao Jie secretly training beyond his level? Or perhaps undertaking tasks for inner disciples that involved more than just fetching items? The hints didn't align with Hao Jie's usual bluster about standard training.

  These observations flickered through Wen Xuan’s mind, unnoticed by the other disciple. They changed nothing about the immediate situation – Hao Jie was still arrogant, Wen Xuan was still at the bottom – but they added another layer to his understanding, another faint whisper contradicting the surface narrative.

  Hao Jie tucked the inkstone into his own robes. "Right, well, I'm off. Try not to disappear completely under the dust before Steward Liu remembers you exist." He turned, casting one last disdainful look over his shoulder, and walked out, the door groaning shut once more, plunging the Repository back into its familiar gloom.

  Wen Xuan stood alone again in the silence, the faint scent of Ironbone Liniment now mingling with the Repository's older, deeper smells. He felt the familiar sting of Hao Jie’s contempt, the weight of his own lowly status. Yet, something had shifted. The Repository was no longer just a place of dead things and dust. It was a place of faint whispers, hidden activities, lingering scents, and worn floorboards that hinted at untold stories. And the strange, overwhelming experience with the dummy core… it felt less like an isolated incident and more like the first syllable of a secret language he was only just beginning to perceive. He looked down at his own hands, dusty and grimy, but the fingers tingled slightly, as if remembering the feel of fractured glass and the echo of a stubborn, ancient will. The path of cultivation seemed impossibly steep, but perhaps, just perhaps, another path was starting to reveal itself, here amongst the forgotten things.