Chapter 7

Chapter 7: Literary Heart Signature Seal

The young man held out his right hand, palm up.

Shen Tang stared at it, uncertain. After a moment, she set her own hand on his, tilting her head.

“Like this?”

He looked at her with a dead, flat expression that somehow felt louder than shouting.

Shen Tang yanked her hand back like she’d been burned.

“Condense your qi in your palm,” he said.

She still looked lost, and his patience visibly thinned. He spoke slower, like he was explaining to a child.

“When you used word-spirit, did you feel something move from your Dan Palace through your meridians?”

Shen Tang hesitated, then nodded.

“That was qi. Draw it out now. Condense it in your palm.”

Word-spirit wasn’t guaranteed every time. It depended on familiarity and control. Someone who could hold off a third-grade Hairpin-Bird Rank with a Literary Heart—and with a strong word-spirit effect—shouldn’t be this clueless.

But Shen Tang was exactly that clueless.

She closed her eyes and hunted for the odd sensation she remembered—qi, Dan Palace, word-spirit, Literary Heart. After a long stretch, something shifted, thin but real, and she guided it outward.

A colorless ball formed above her palm, first pea-sized, then swelling to the size of a fist, hovering an inch in the air.

Shen Tang looked up. “Sir… is this qi?”

His gaze stayed locked on her palm, his face half-hidden in shadow. The air felt wrong. Shen Tang’s throat tightened.

“And what grade is my Literary Heart?” she pressed.

He blinked once, like he’d resurfaced. “Refine it. Compress it. Like this.”

A pale green whirlpool of qi rose above his palm. It looked like mist, then thickened into a deep green gel within two breaths. Under Shen Tang’s stare, it hardened into a fist-sized signature seal, deep green and oddly shaped.

The side was carved with seal script: “sixth-grade, mid-lower.”

The bottom held another inscription: “Qi Clan Yuan Liang.”

Shen Tang took it, turning it carefully. “You’re called Qi Yuan Liang?”

He watched her eyes as he answered. “My surname is Qi. My given name is Shan. My courtesy name is Yuan Liang.”

Shen Tang didn’t see any contempt in herself, but he seemed to be checking for it anyway. When he found none, his expression softened by a fraction.

“Good name,” she said automatically.

Qi Shan went quiet, as if he didn’t know what to do with that.

She handed the signature seal back. “I think I get it.”

She copied his method, pressing her qi inward. The swirl turned milky-white, then gel-like, then sharpened into something small and transparent, like crystal.

Shen Tang withdrew the qi and immediately checked the side of her own signature seal.

Nothing.

“Huh?” she muttered. “Why is there no writing?”

“No writing?” Qi Shan echoed, but his tone held no surprise.

Shen Tang offered it to him. “The side is blank. The bottom has writing, though.”

The bottom read: “Shen Clan You Li.”

Qi Shan squinted, taking time to read through the transparency. “Shen… You… Li. So you really aren’t Madam Gong’s descendant.”

He glanced up. “But little young lord, your courtesy name is… delicate.”

Shen Tang didn’t answer. She’d already given up explaining the whole “I’m a girl” thing. In this world, Literary Heart meant “male” by default. Fighting that assumption here and now would only paint a target on her back.

“Sir Qi,” she said instead, “my name is Shen Tang.”

Qi Shan’s mouth curved faintly. “Pear leaves fall, the color of rouge; buckwheat blooms, white as snow, fragrant. It’s a good name.”

Shen Tang forced a smile.

She wanted to say her name was Shen Tang, and You Li was a random pen name with no deep meaning—but he’d just shown off his learning, and she wasn’t about to stomp on it.

What she cared about was her grade.

“Sir Qi,” she asked, “what grade is my Literary Heart?”

Qi Shan looked at her and asked, “What grade do you want?”

Shen Tang stared. “What does that mean?”

He didn’t answer directly. “Literary Hearts have nine grades, unlike Martial Gall, which has twenty ranks.

First-grade upper-upper. Second-grade upper-middle. Third-grade upper-lower… all the way down to ninth-grade lower-lower.

Martial Gall can be tempered and advanced. Someone talented enough might even reach Marquis rank. But Literary Heart is fixed. Whatever you’re born with is what you have.

Mine is sixth-grade, mid-lower—nothing special, nothing shameful.”

He met her eyes. “So. What grade do you hope you are?”

Shen Tang’s eyebrows lifted. “I can choose?”

“For others, no,” he said. “But you met me. I can help you.”

Her instincts prickled.

Qi Shan didn’t explain further. He only said, quiet and pointed, “A person carrying a fortune through a crowded market invites trouble.”

Shen Tang’s spine tightened.

So having a strong Literary Heart could get you killed, too.

She forced down her curiosity and asked the practical question instead. “Can you disguise any grade?”

Qi Shan didn’t answer, but Shen Tang understood anyway. He couldn’t change what she truly had. It had to be a disguise.

Testing her luck, she asked, “Then… can I disguise it as first-grade upper-upper?”

Qi Shan gave a short, incredulous laugh. “First-grade upper-upper is the Sage grade—a void grade. Only a feudal lord holding a State Seal can have it. Are you trying to die?”

Shen Tang looked down at her clear signature seal.

“Then make it safe,” she said. “Let it look like ninth-grade lower-lower.”

Qi Shan’s gaze sharpened, approving despite himself. “Smart.”

As he worked, seal script surfaced along the side of her signature seal: “ninth-grade lower-lower.”

Shen Tang turned it in her fingers. “How do I put this away?”

“Why would you?” Qi Shan said. “It proves your identity. Even a ‘ninth-grade lower-lower’ Literary Heart is still better than being ordinary.”

In this era, ordinary lives were cheaper than weeds. Shen Tang was also a fugitive prisoner. The mark carved behind her ear had been branded by special means—unless she cut off the ear, it would never disappear.

But with a Literary Heart signature seal, she could wear earrings to cover the mark. Most constables wouldn’t even dare check.

It was protection.

Qi Shan added, almost like an afterthought, “A signature seal is an official stamp.”