It began with only two boys too weak to join hunts. Outcast, mocked, they approached Tian hesitantly.
"Brother Leng," they said, faces red. "C-can you… teach us your frost breathing?"
For a moment, Tian froze. Him, a teacher? But looking into their eyes — eyes so painfully like his own had been, filled with the wounds of mockery — he could not refuse.
He gathered the boys under old pines, and for days, taught them as elder had once guided him— patiently, slowly, with endurance. They practiced night after night, guided by his Frost Manual, barely forming flickers of mist around them.
When hunters jeered at their "waste," Tian only smiled faintly. "Even waste, layered together, becomes mountain snow that buries forests."
Word spread. More children sought him out — not strong ones, but weak ones, bullied ones. By summer, nearly a dozen gathered under Tian's hand.
For the first time, Coldwater Village saw the useless children of yesterday training together, frost glittering faintly from their palms, no longer isolated, no longer alone.
And at dusk, Yuexin would stand watching proudly, her smile soft yet shining. She whispered, "Tian… one day they'll call this not a village, but a clan."
His heart throbbed. The seed was sprouting.
🔥 End of Chapter 18