The mountains of Yunxiao Province rose like the backs of ancient dragons, coiled in slumber beneath a sky painted with soft jade and drifting clouds. Mist clung to the trees like silk, and from afar, the world seemed as peaceful as an immortal's dream.
But dreams are fragile things.
Qin Yun stood barefoot on a river stone, balancing as water rushed past him in a cold rush. His arms trembled slightly, a basket full of tea leaves strapped to his back, soaked with rain and sweat. The sun hadn't yet risen. He hadn't eaten since yesterday.
"Still too slow," he muttered to himself, jumping from the rock just before a large carp nearly collided with his shin.
He landed with a splash, then laughed softly—bitterly. A boy without a spirit root shouldn't expect balance like a cultivator. And yet here he was, trying the same exercises the sect disciples practiced high above the valley.
Qin Yun wiped his brow and looked to the cliffs.
There, carved into the stone like the bones of heaven, stood the Jade Serpent Sect, high and cold and perfect. Once, he dreamed of being taken in—learning to harness qi, mastering sword arts, riding atop cranes into the clouds.
That dream died at age six.
"Qin Yun, you're wasting your time again!"
The voice belonged to Uncle Yao, his mother's cousin, a grizzled man with calloused hands and eyes like burnt charcoal. He didn't hate Yun. But pity, like rust, clung to everything the man did.
"Leave the stones alone and help your mother. The elders from the village are coming to test her new blend."
Yun bowed slightly and nodded. "Yes, Uncle."
He walked back to the hut—simple, wooden, held together by vines and prayer charms. Smoke from the chimney curled into the sky.
His mother was stirring a pot with both hands, lips pursed. "You've got river mud on your chin."
Qin Yun wiped it off without complaint.
"You're not doing those sect forms again, are you?" she asked.
He didn't answer.
She sighed. "You are what the heavens made you. A bird doesn't curse the sky for not being a dragon."
"I'm not cursing the sky," he muttered. "I just want to understand it."
That night, as the elders sipped tea and argued over whether the rain was an omen or a blessing, Qin Yun crept into the woods behind the hut.
He followed no path, only the rhythm of crickets and the glimmer of blue fungi on the roots.
He often came here to think.
To breathe.
But tonight, something pulled him deeper.
Deeper still.
Past the owl trees and the ridge of stones that marked the forgotten tombs of mountain hermits.
He arrived at the base of a cliff where the land dipped into a hidden grove. It was silent here. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.
There was a tree—black-barked, leafless, its branches twisted like fingers clenching toward the sky.
Beneath its roots was something buried.
He didn't know how he knew.
He just did.
He dug with his hands.
Soil gave way to stone, and stone gave way to a box—ironwood, bound in copper wire, etched with symbols he couldn't understand.
When he touched it, his mind shuddered.
A voice whispered in his thoughts, like a breath pulled across old paper:
"Dustless sky… dustless sky… truth without root… fate without form…"
His head burned.
He collapsed.
And then he dreamed.
In his dream, he stood beneath an empty sky—no sun, no moon, just endless, shifting light. In front of him hovered a massive scroll, stretching out into the void. Its pages turned without wind.
Ink bled across it, forming characters that pulsed like stars.
"The Dao has no end.The heavens are not kind.The righteous path is not straight.Walk only forward.Walk until the sky forgets your name."
And then—
—a symbol burned into his chest, and he screamed.
Qin Yun awoke in the grove, coughing soil from his lungs. The box was gone.
But his hand clutched something:
A sliver of paper.
A torn piece of a scroll that should not exist.
And as he stood, still dizzy from visions not his own, he felt it:
A whisper of warmth in his dantian.
Qi