There were days when Peach Blossom Sect felt like the warm corner of an otherwise cold and calculated heaven.
Lian Qiao loved those days.
Today, the air was syrupy with sunshine. Peach blossoms floated lazily through the breeze like sleepy butterflies, and the pond koi were unusually chatty. The sect shimmered with the lazy glow of afternoon, and for once — no one was shouting, sparring, or setting things on fire by accident.
So naturally, Qiao was suspicious.
She squinted up at the sky, one hand shielding her eyes.
"It's too quiet," she whispered. "Something's wrong."
Behind her, Master Bai leaned on his favorite teapot-shaped rock, sipping peach wine straight from the gourd with zero regard for elegance.
"You say that every time the weather is good," he grumbled.
"Because it is!" Qiao insisted. "Last time it was this nice, a cloud beast fell on my roof!"
"...That was your fault. You summoned a dumpling spell during a thunderstorm."
"It was an experiment!"
"It exploded."
"I missed one chant!"
"You created sentient starch, child."
She puffed up, arms crossed, pouting in the most celestial way possible.
Master Bai only laughed.
It was an odd sound — a little too soft, a little too sad.
She noticed it.
Qiao tilted her head. "You've been weird since I got back."
"I've always been weird," he said.
"You know what I mean."
He sighed and stared into the sky.
"Tell me," he said finally, "have you ever felt like you've lived before?"
Qiao blinked. "Huh?"
"Not just dreams or flashes. But… a sense of remembering something you shouldn't. Of feeling something familiar when it's new."
She paused.
Then: "…There was a moment."
He turned toward her.
"In the Eastern Sky," she said slowly. "When he caught me. I looked at his face… and I felt like I'd seen him before. Not like I recognized him. Just… like my heart knew something my mind didn't."
Master Bai nodded. "That's past-life resonance."
Qiao froze.
"That's real?"
"Oh, very," he said casually. "Most souls recycle through time, especially the young ones. But when two souls entangle deeply — through love, sacrifice, betrayal — sometimes echoes remain."
"And I… echoed?" she asked.
"I think you did more than that."
He pulled a scroll from his sleeve — another one. Old, cracked, sealed in red wax and bound with gold thread.
"I wasn't going to show you this yet. But…" He handed it to her. "This scroll found its way into my hands the day you arrived at the sect. It was sealed with your name. But it's… incomplete. It only opens when certain spiritual markers awaken."
Qiao stared at it.
The wax bore the mark of the Fifth Heaven — the Realm of Origins.
She touched the seal—
The scroll opened.
🌀 Within the scroll…
She saw fragments.
A battlefield soaked in silver rain.
A girl in crimson, standing on a cliff, her robes torn, her hands outstretched toward someone.
A man in black armor, unmoving, eyes wild with restrained power.
She screamed something — and the heavens cracked.
Then darkness.
Qiao gasped and dropped the scroll.
Her hands shook.
"That… that was me," she whispered.
Master Bai was watching her, face unreadable. "And him?"
She didn't answer.
Because she didn't need to.
She knew.
And in the Eastern Sky, as if connected by thought alone, Mo Yujin stood at the base of the old wellspring temple — a ruin hidden deep beneath his domain.
He reached down, brushing his fingers across the moss-covered stone.
A faint etching glowed back at him — a name long faded from history.
Lian.
He closed his eyes.
And remembered.
The girl in red.
The girl he couldn't save.