Heavenly Cataclysm

Before dawn had fully broken, that distinctive scent of Aoki Sect’s mountain gate had already crept into Lin Mo’s nostrils—a musty tang of aged timber mixed with the dampness of morning dew, beneath it all lingering a faint, yet stubbornly persistent sour rot that never quite dispersed. He drew in a sharp breath, forcing that familiar, stomach-turning odor deep into his lungs, as if to squeeze out all the stale air accumulated over a night’s sleep.

Cold—so cold it seeped into his bones. The mountain of Aoki Sect was high; though the leaves at its foot might still be green in September, here at the halfway house for menial workers, a thin layer of white frost had already formed on the flagstones in the morning. Lin Mo rubbed his nearly numb hands; his knuckles, reddened and stiff from the chill, cracked audibly. He exhaled a bloom of white breath, watching it dissolve swiftly into the gray pre-dawn sky—just like those futile hopes he once harbored while rolling in the mud.

“Lin Mo! You little bastard. What are you dawdling for!” The hoarse shout of Steward Wang, still thick with the rasp of last night’s drink, exploded from the relatively warm stone hut by the courtyard gate, slamming into everyone’s eardrums like a block of ice. “Planning to dump the night soil when the sun’s on your ass? Want the whole sect to start their morning lessons stinking of piss and shit?”

A ragged line of a dozen or so menial workers, most wrapped like Lin Mo in thin, stiff hemp tunics, hunched their necks and blinked blearily. At Steward Wang’s bellow, they jolted to attenti