Null Reading

The Elder Council convened on the third floor of the Testing Pavilion, where they convened for things that did not officially happen.

"The Spirit Gauge recorded a null reading again." Elder Mao folded his hands. "Every time young Liang passes through the detection array, it returns null."

"Broken array?" Elder Shen suggested.

"We replaced it twice. Same result."

Elder Huang, oldest and most paranoid of the three, had not stopped staring at the records. "The Cursed Barrens. The lake specifically. Something came out of that lake attached to that boy."

"He's a rootless disciple."

"Was," Huang said. "Whatever is in him now is not on any scale we have. Null does not mean zero. It means the gauge cannot express the value."

Silence settled over the pavilion like snow.

"What do we do?"

Elder Huang folded the record scroll. "We watch. Carefully. And we do not let the outer sects know there is something in our backyard that breaks measuring tools."