Leng Xue had not walked away from Shrek Academy after being denied entrance. Where others cursed their rejection or sulked home, he simply planted himself at the outskirts. A small shed belonging to an abandoned toolshed became his resting place, with broken roof patched by his Frost Veil every night to block wind. He told himself that roots did not retreat when soil proved hard. They simply waited for cracks to deepen.
The villagers nearby thought him mad. "That northern boy really squats there as if Shrek owes him?" they sneered. Even those who admired his calm grew uncertain after weeks passed. Huan wanted to drag him away, impatient. "Why humiliate yourself? If they won't take us, we'll join some Empire regiment, prove our frost on real battlefields." Yan, softer, worried constantly for him, heart aching at thin figure kneeling at dawn, meditating in biting cold even as southern spring bloomed warm.
But Xue only smiled faintly. "Ancestor Tian once endured whole life mocked. This is little. Patience is frost's blade. I am not here to beg. I am here to wait for winds to change."
He improved, slowly. Day by day he practiced expansions of Frost Veil, deliberately training under warmer currents so that sweat stung eyes yet cold mist still bent obedient into ring around him. The villagers, at first laughing, slowly realized he cooled their storage huts and saved fish stocks with flick of hand. Their sneers shifted uncertain, then turned into hesitant gratitude. He refused payment each time. "This frost belongs to those who share soil," he said.
By the third week, rumors drifted inside Shrek gates. "That northern boy we flung away still sits outside? And he doesn't fight, he just trains? Strange one." Some instructors laughed with contempt, others raised brows thoughtful. Monster Academy prided itself on patience of monsters as much as ferocity. Already eyes turned subtle toward the frost child waiting beyond gates.
And for Leng Xue, each night he whispered, "Tang San… I feel your path crossing mine nearer. Not yet. But soon."