The Mending Art

Since the Myriad Dao is flawed, the flaw has its mending. To see where the gap lies in an art, a pill formula, a talisman—then at the least cost to skirt it, to mend it, to make what would have harmed someone usable again—this is mending the flaw.

Mending is never free. Skirt one break, and the vessel of the later stretch may already be injured; mend one ingredient, and you must first gather the original formula, and risk being traced. Mend it, and you have a living path no one else can walk; fail, and mild cases suffer deviation, severe ones draw eyes that should not have been drawn.

For the first time, someone in the bazaar's lowest rung discovered: those flawed arts cast away as refuse, mended just a little, could truly carry one further along the path.