He pushed aside the grass and found a fist-sized egg, azure veins threading its surface like lightning trapped in glass. A cooling circle of melted frost ringed it, as if it had fallen from a cloud and hit the earth gently together with an old blessing.
Qin Mo's heart stirred. Dragon. Even in the lower realm's thin qi, the egg echoed with an ancient tide.
"Where did you come from, little one?" he murmured, letting a sliver of perception sink through the shell. He touched a sleeping mind curled around itself, stubborn and proud. A dragon's name scratched faintly at the edges of thought: Ao… Ling.
He looked toward the sect's wards. If discovered, the egg would vanish into a senior's vault, a bargaining chip in a world that craved leverage more than law.
Qin Mo wrapped the egg in his gray robe and tucked it inside his herb basket. "I suppose I will eat less rice," he said softly. "So you can live."
He'd barely stood when a lazy voice drifted over. "Yo, what's that? New herb?" A girl with ink-black hair and a bamboo hat leaned against the crooked willow, smiling like she was always in on a joke only she understood. Her waist badge read: Tang Yurou, Outer Alchemy Hall.
Qin Mo's fingers did not tense. He bowed. "Junior Sister."
Her eyes flicked to the basket, then back up. "Your herb plot has a heartbeat?"
"Everything has a heartbeat," Qin Mo said. "If you listen."
Tang Yurou's smile sharpened. "Poetic. I like you. I'm Tang Yurou. I need a partner for the spring's low-tier pill trials. You're tending a dead plot with a poet's hands. That means you'll do."
Qin Mo considered. Alchemy was not new to him; in his last life, he'd cooked suns into pills to heal worlds. But here, he needed a place, resources, a legal reason to move.
"I accept," he said.
"Good." She pushed her hat up with a knuckle and eyed his face. "You're bleeding. Someone step on you?"
"It happens," Qin Mo said.
"Not to me." She grinned. "We'll fix that."
As she strolled away, a gust tugged her hat. For a breath, he saw a faint phoenix sigil stitched into the lining. He tucked that away with the egg's soft warmth and the Myriad-Dao Wheel's silent promise.
He returned to work. He planted, watered, and waited. He listened to dirt and memory. The day bled into evening. When night fell, he put the egg under the willow and built a simple warding array with seven pebbles and one short breath of qi. It hummed, weak but stubborn.
Under the stars, Qin Mo held the egg in his hands and whispered a lullaby that once made suns fall asleep.
The egg shuddered, and for an instant, a tiny snout pressed against the shell from within.