Three days after the vision, a summons came.
Li Wei had been meditating beneath the Windfall Tree when an outer disciple arrived bearing a scroll sealed with azure wax.
Mission Rank: Yellow
Assignment: Escort a supply caravan to the Moonwake Outpost through Hollow Vale.
Duration: Two days. Team of four. Danger Level: Low.
Reward: 80 contribution points.
At first glance, the mission seemed beneath him. Escorting traders through a known route? Even new disciples took such tasks for pocket change or reputation.
But Elder Yunxi said only one thing:
"There are no small storms, only shallow eyes."
So he accepted.
⸻
His companions were already waiting at the outer gate.
• Su Chen, a brash, confident fist cultivator from the Storm Anchor path. Broad shoulders, loud voice.
• Mei Lin, quiet and sharp-eyed, a scout from the Drift Leaf path. She carried two short blades and spoke only when needed.
• Jin Yu, a Cloud Whisperer—nervous, awkward, but carrying a rare spiritual detection mirror on his belt.
They all recognized Li Wei from the trials—but no one mentioned his duel with Lin Yao. Still, the tension was there. Especially in Su Chen, who clearly didn't like being teamed with someone who'd skipped the "pecking order."
"Let's get this over with," Chen grunted. "Deadbeats who can't protect their caravans shouldn't be out there in the first place."
They departed at dawn.
⸻
Hollow Vale stretched between two ranges of mist-covered cliffs. Centuries ago, it had been a battlefield for rogue cultivators and forbidden sects. Now it was just a quiet, windless valley with strange echoes and too many empty nests.
Too quiet.
Jin Yu checked his spirit mirror every hour. "No beasts," he muttered again and again. "No movement."
"That's what worries me," Mei Lin finally said.
Li Wei agreed.
Even the insects were gone.
As they camped that night near a riverbend, the air grew unnaturally still. The traders set up camp, but everyone kept one hand on their weapons.
Li Wei couldn't sleep.
The wind kept pulling at him.
Or… was it the pendant?
He stepped away from the firelight and sat beneath a tree, letting the wind wrap around him. Slowly, deliberately, he placed his palm over the jade pendant.
It pulsed.
And he saw it again.
The mountain split in two, the silver-haired figure, the storm overhead.
But this time, the voice was clearer.
"The second seal holds memory. The kind that bleeds."
His breath caught.
Then the vision shifted—showing a ruin buried beneath Hollow Vale, carved with the mark of the Tempest Heart.
And a single word burned into the ground:
"Beware."
⸻
He awoke to screaming.
The camp was under attack.
But not from beasts—from within.
One of the traders had been a skinwalker, a cursed spirit wearing human flesh.
By the time Li Wei reached the firelight, Su Chen was grappling with a monstrous shape of rotting sinew and bone. Jin Yu had been wounded, his mirror shattered.
Mei Lin shouted, "It's feeding on qi—don't use spirit techniques!"
Too late.
Su Chen struck with a reinforced palm—wind and qi exploding into the creature's chest—but the thing absorbed it.
It grew stronger.
Li Wei knew what he had to do.
He closed his eyes.
Breathed.
Called not to the qi, but to the wind beneath it—the same resonance he had touched in his training.
The world around him dulled.
The air bent.
He drew the wind around his body—not to strike, but to contain.
And then he whispered the phrase from the vision.
"You cannot bind the wind forever."
But you can trap it just long enough.
He released a spiraling ring of wind pressure—not damaging, but isolating, like a wall that bent instead of breaking. The skinwalker roared in rage, trapped within the barrier.
"Now!" he shouted.
Mei Lin leapt in, her twin blades flashing with cold steel, not qi. They struck true. The creature shrieked, and its body collapsed into ash.
Silence returned.
Only the wind remained.
⸻
Later, as they tended to Jin Yu and prepared to leave, Su Chen clapped a hand on Li Wei's shoulder—grudgingly respectful.
"You're strange, Li Wei," he muttered. "But maybe strange's what we need."
Li Wei nodded, but said nothing.
The pendant burned faintly against his chest.
Later that night, as the caravan approached the outer edge of the vale, the second seal cracked.
And a voice whispered—not a warning, but a question:
"Will you betray them as I did?"
Li Wei's breath caught.
Because for the first time… he wasn't sure if the voice was asking about the past.
Or about the future.