The gates closed behind her without a sound.
But the silence… was crueler than any noise.
Yun Yun, dressed in a white robe that floated like silk in mist, took her first step into the Gate of Life and Death. Her feet had barely touched the grayish ground when a sensation of absolute emptiness brushed her chest, as if every emotion within her had been ripped away in an instant.
Her Dou Qi vanished.
No, it was as if it had been sealed by some external technique.
It slipped away from her body as though it had never existed.
Yun Yun pressed her lips together. She said nothing. The elders of the sect had warned her: “Here, only those with soul… and flesh survive.”
“Twenty-four years of darkness. That is the final trial. Only then will you prove you are worthy of leading others.”
She lifted her gaze toward the horizon.
But there was no horizon.
Only stone, mist, distant roars… and death.
She slowly descended a hill of fractured stone, her hair tied high and her back straight, as if every step was part of a ritual.
Her face showed no fear. But inside, a crack had begun to form.
Not from pain.
But from solitude.
Since she was a child, she had been treated as a symbol. A prodigy. An example of discipline. A leader born to carry the torch of the sect.
But who was she without Dou Qi?
Who was Yun Yun when the wind no longer danced around her?
The silence answered with a roar.
An echo from somewhere deep, damp, carnivorous.
Yun Yun turned smoothly, without alarm, like a lotus in a disturbed pond. She drew a silver needle hidden in her robe—the only weapon she had been allowed to keep—and kept walking.
Hours passed. Or days. Time did not move. It only breathed.
And then… she saw something that made her stop.
A figure. In the distance. Sitting beside a rock.
A man in a torn robe, with long white hair cascading over his shoulders like a waterfall of ash. His back was broad. His posture relaxed. But his presence… was like a sleeping mountain.
Yun Yun narrowed her eyes.
Another disciple?
An illusion?
He emitted no Dou Qi. He did not move. Yet the stones around him seemed curved… as if pulled by some gravity that surrounded his being.
Instinctively, she stepped back.
The figure lifted his head, and for a brief moment, their eyes met.
No words.
No threat.
Just that strange thrum in her chest… as if her heart had recognized something her mind could not yet name.
Yun Yun turned away and hid among the rocks.
—A soul on trial, just like me, —she whispered.
That night, as she slept beneath the warmth of a cracked stone ledge, she didn’t think of her sect. Or her trial. Or the path she was meant to walk.
She thought of those eyes.
Deep. Calm. And silently dangerous.