Walking up to his house, the boy saw the courtyard gate wide open. Thinking he’d been robbed, he rushed inside, only to find a tall boy sitting on the threshold, leaning against the locked door, yawning out of sheer boredom. When he saw Ethan Brooks, he jumped up as if his seat was on fire, ran over, grabbed Ethan Brooks’s arm tightly, and yanked him toward the house, lowering his voice: “Hurry up and open the door, I’ve got something urgent to tell you!”

Ethan Brooks couldn’t break free from the guy’s grip and had no choice but to let himself be dragged to unlock the door. The sturdy boy, two years older than him, quickly shoved Ethan Brooks aside, tiptoed over to Ethan Brooks’s wooden bed, pressed his ear tightly against the wall, and started eavesdropping on the base of the wall next door.

Curious, Ethan Brooks asked, “Brian Clark, what are you doing?”

The tall boy ignored Ethan Brooks’s question. About half a stick of incense later, Brian Clark returned to normal, sitting on the edge of the wooden bed, his expression complicated—partly relieved, partly regretful.

It was only then that Brian Clark noticed Ethan Brooks was up to something odd: squatting just inside the door, body leaning out, using a candle stub barely the size of a thumb to burn a piece of yellow paper, letting the ashes fall outside the threshold. It seemed Ethan Brooks was muttering something, but he was too far away for Brian Clark to hear clearly.

Brian Clark was the last disciple taken in by Old Yao, the master of a long-established dragon kiln. As for the slow-witted Ethan Brooks, the old man had never truly accepted him as a disciple from start to finish. Locally, if a disciple hadn’t served the master tea, or the master hadn’t drunk that cup, there was no official master-apprentice relationship. Ethan Brooks and Brian Clark weren’t neighbors—their ancestral homes were quite far apart. The reason Brian Clark had introduced Ethan Brooks to Old Yao back then stemmed from an old grudge between the two boys. Brian Clark had once been a notoriously unruly youth in the town. Before his grandfather passed away, at least there was an elder at home to keep him in check. But after his grandfather died, the boy, already as tall and strong as a grown man at twelve or thirteen, became the neighborhood’s number one troublemaker. Later, for some reason, Brian Clark angered a group of Lu family boys and ended up cornered in Mud Bottle Alley, where he was thoroughly beaten. The other boys, all hot-blooded and in their prime, didn’t hold back at all. Brian Clark was soon beaten so badly he was vomiting blood. The dozen or so families living in Mud Bottle Alley were mostly poor kiln workers scraping by—none dared get involved.

At the time, Jason Smith wasn’t afraid at all. In fact, he happily squatted on the wall, watching the commotion, wishing for even more chaos.

In the end, only one scrawny child, after sneaking out of his yard, ran to the alley entrance and shouted at the top of his lungs, “Someone’s dead! Someone’s dead!”

Hearing the word “dead,” the Lu family boys snapped out of it. Seeing Brian Clark lying on the ground, covered in blood and barely alive, those rich kids finally felt a wave of fear. After exchanging nervous glances, they ran off down the other end of Mud Bottle Alley.

But after that, Brian Clark didn’t thank the child who had saved his life. Instead, he came by every few days to tease and mess with him. The orphan was stubborn, and no matter how Brian Clark bullied him, he refused to cry, which only made the boy more frustrated. But then, one year, Brian Clark saw that the little orphan surnamed Chen looked like he wouldn’t survive the winter. His conscience finally kicked in. By then, Brian Clark was already apprenticed at the dragon kiln, so he took the orphan to the kiln by Baoxi Creek. It was dozens of miles west of town, through snowy mountains. To this day, Brian Clark still can’t figure out how that little guy, skinny as a stick of charcoal and with legs as thin as bamboo poles, managed to walk all the way to the dragon kiln. In the end, Old Yao did take in Ethan Brooks, but treated the two boys worlds apart. With his last disciple Brian Clark, he would both beat and scold him, but even a blind man could sense the care behind it. For example, once, after hitting Brian Clark so hard his forehead bled, the tough-skinned boy didn’t think much of it, but Old Yao, who was always stern in front of his disciples, paced around his house for most of the night, still worried. In the end, he had to call Ethan Brooks over to bring Brian Clark a bottle of ointment.

All these years, Ethan Brooks had always envied Brian Clark.