There was an apprentice at a spirit-herb shop in Wucheng named Chen Du. He had a mixed spiritual root and was sixteen years old. Every day, he identified goods, kept the books, and watched the shop. Cultivation was out of his reach: he couldn't afford a manual, his mixed spiritual root couldn't draw in spiritual energy, and even rogue cultivators looked down on him.
Then someone paid for a purchase with a broken stone of unknown origin.
After that, he realized his eyes had changed. They couldn't tell truth from falsehood or good from evil. They could see only one thing: what was missing.
A pill formula missing an ingredient, a cultivation manual missing a passage, a formation missing a corner, a person's heart missing a piece. Others saw things as whole. He saw the cracks.
This was no heaven-defying power. Seeing a problem didn't mean he could solve it. He was still the weakest of them all, still had to keep the books to survive. But the cracks in the Heavenly Dao were right there. No one else looked, so he did.
Four regions, fifteen realms, three falls, twice lifted back to his feet. The last time, he stood up on his own.
Some called him foolish. “You see a flaw in the Heavenly Dao, so you should mend it, change it.”
He said, “I won't mend it.”
A flaw isn't a mistake. It's a doorway for people to walk through.
