Planting the Dao in Withered Branches

I was buried beneath a dead mine for three days. I survived by clinging to a piece of firewood that wouldn't burn.

My father left it to me. He said it was strange, that it wouldn't catch fire. I was seventeen, with a mixed spiritual root. At the mine, people like us were called "leaky roots": energy flowed in and leaked right back out, leaving us to dig for the rest of our lives. But with that piece of wood against me, the breath I'd been losing for three years didn't leak away for the first time.

Only later did I learn that it wasn't firewood. It was a root from a tree felled a thousand years ago, lying in the rocky earth.

They want the root. All I have is a branch.