Long Yanshen still felt the weight of the recent battle. The wind among the pines carried the cold scent of ancient snow, and before him Ling Xiyan adjusted her broken sword, her eyes shining with determination.
— It was just a stroke of luck — Yanshen said, in an almost casual tone, as if the scene from minutes ago had meant nothing.— I have no aura at all. Perhaps fate was distracted.
Xiyan stared at him in silence. Deep down, she knew it was a lie. She had seen the enemies' sword dissolve into dust before two simple fingers. But she chose to play along.— Luck, then? What kind of traveler finds luck like that on the open road?
Yanshen turned his gaze away, his voice low:— I come from far away. And I ended up lost… here.
She frowned, then smiled.— If you're lost, at least accept a meal of thanks. It's not every day someone risks their life for me.
They walked to Jinghai, a city built on stone bridges crossing narrow canals. Bazaars buzzed with life, banners of minor sects colored the air, and the smell of spices mixed with cheap incense.
Yanshen walked slowly, absorbing every detail. To him, it felt like millennia since he had last seen the human world. Each child's laughter, each vendor's cry, each small bell hanging from a doorway was as if the universe itself had been returned to him.
During the meal, Xiyan observed him with curiosity. He spoke little, but when he asked questions, they were sharp, as if he were weighing the world with each word.
— Where are you going, after all? — Yanshen asked.
Xiyan lifted her chin, confident:— I'm on my way to the Sect Tournament. Any cultivator may participate. If I am chosen, I might represent my sect before the council.
She looked at him with sudden astonishment.— How do you not know this? The entire continent speaks of the tournament!
Yanshen only smiled faintly.— Perhaps I come from a place where echoes do not reach.
The silence between them carried more weight than any explanation.
When they parted, the wind carried snowflakes over Jinghai's rooftops. Xiyan left for the north. Alone, Yanshen waited for nightfall.
By the pale light of the moon, he withdrew to an abandoned courtyard and sat in silence. His breathing became an invisible thread, each heartbeat hidden beneath the Veil of a Thousand Absences. Cultivating was dangerous — any sign could expose too much. Yet he had to keep alive the flame he had inherited from Long Zhuan.
Days later, Yanshen reached Donglin, a metropolis where wealth and misery touched like opposing blades. Jade pavilions rose above fetid alleys; gilded carriages passed over ragged children. The contrast cut the eyes like a wound.
It was there he saw the scene. A thin boy in torn clothes was being dragged by youths in luxurious robes.
— Beggars shouldn't breathe the same air as us — one of them said, laughing as he shoved the boy to the ground.
Before anger could turn into blows, Yanshen stepped forward.— Let him go.
The tone was not loud, but carried enough weight to silence the street.
— And who are you? — mocked one of the young men. — Another wanderer with no sect?
Yanshen did not answer. He simply lifted the boy and placed him behind him.
At that moment the crowd parted. A young woman appeared, in a white robe adorned with jade ornaments — Lan Yuerong, daughter of the governor of Donglin and visiting disciple of the Celestial Mirror Sect.
Her beauty seemed unreal, as if the reflection of the moon had descended to the world. But what struck Yanshen most was the instant their eyes met. For a moment, he froze. Something in her resembled deep waters that recognized the weight of the heavens.
Lan Yuerong raised her voice, soft yet undeniable:— Enough.
The youths immediately backed away, respectful.
She then turned to Yanshen.— What is your name? — Lan Yuerong asked.
— Long Yanshen — he replied.
— Long Yanshen… — she pronounced slowly, as if tasting something rare. The name sounded soft on her lips, but to his ears it was like a contained thunder.
— Who are you? And why did you protect this boy?
Yanshen held her gaze, steady:— Because no one should be crushed simply for existing.
For an instant, the murmur of the street disappeared. No one dared speak so directly to the governor's daughter. But Yanshen did not bow. And Yuerong, instead of taking offense, let her lips curve faintly, surprised.
— Long Yanshen… — she repeated, lower now, as if wanting to carve the name into memory. The spark in her eyes was not only political — it was almost personal, intimate, like the beginning of a story only she could see.
Around them, the guards exchanged indignant looks. His boldness was an affront. But to her, it was something else: freshness.
— Interesting… — she murmured, this time looking straight into his gray eyes. There was an unexpected gleam of admiration in her tone.
— A wanderer with no aura… who does not bow.
She stepped away with grace, her fragrance lingering in the air. But before disappearing among the guards, she turned once more, her gaze fixed on him as if unwilling to let go:— I want to know more about you, Long Yanshen.
Only then did she order, in a low, firm voice:— Investigate him.
That night, the same humiliated youths tried to ambush him in Donglin's alleys. Yanshen dealt with them as one snuffs out embers: swiftly, silently, definitively. One glance was enough to reduce arrogance to fear.
But when he sensed he was being watched, he used an illusion technique taught in the Abyss. The guard assigned by Yuerong returned confused, unable to explain what he had seen. "He was there… and yet he wasn't."
Yuerong listened in silence. Her lips curved into an enigmatic smile.
On the heights of a forgotten mountain, a woman with loose hair stood still. The cold wind stirred her strands, but nothing tore her gaze from the moon. In her eyes lay the weight of centuries compressed: the memory of the night she laid a baby upon the snow… and the open wound of each birthday answered only by silence.
Her name was Yu Meilin. Once a brilliant disciple cast out and hunted for loving the wrong man, she returned years later to the gates of her former sect. Many believed she would never be accepted again. They were wrong.
Yu Meilin rose step by step, until she became one of the great elders of the Celestial Mirror Sect (天镜宗 · Tiān Jìng Zōng) — respected for her cunning, feared for her coldness.
Yet in the solitude of night, when disciples slept and the jade halls lay silent, she became once more only a broken mother, staring at the sky in search of a face she had never seen grow.
— My child… — she whispered, and the wind carried the sound like a fragile vow.
— Wherever you are… forgive me.
Below, in Donglin, Long Yanshen halted his steps. A strange pressure pierced his heart, as if an unseen hand had crossed the heavens to reach him. He lifted his eyes to the same moon.
The moon was whole, yet solitary — a mirror returning only absences. A dull ache, not of flesh, passed through his soul. A nameless pity, as if something inside him remembered having once been left behind.
At that moment, mother and son were joined not by what they knew, but by what was missing. She, by the guilt of abandonment. He, by the absence of a home.
And the moon, silent, seemed to watch them with ancient compassion — witness to a bond the world had tried to erase, but which still pulsed in the dark, awaiting the moment of revelation.