The morning sky was calm, as if the world above refused to acknowledge the tremor that ran beneath it. Word of the Lian–Jia engagement unfurled through market alleys, caravan camps, and the low taverns of the mountain passes—rumor traveled faster than any decree. To those who watched trade routes and marriage chests, it meant power consolidated; to those who moved between clans, it was a severing of safety.
Feng Xieyun did not move among courtiers and heralds. He had been sleeping in a narrow hermitage for weeks—an old place called the Solitary Lotus Pavilion, carved into a cliff-face where the road gave way to wild grass and hardy pines. It was a poor refuge, low on comforts and rich in silence; it suited a man who wanted the world to forget him.
He woke before dawn, the taste of iron in his mouth and the echo of the Immortal Plane still a white-hot coal beneath his ribs. The Goddess' touch had not left him; her warmth was a ghost that braided with the cold chains of the System. He moved slowly, each breath a measured strike against the lingering headache.
The Heavenly Demon Dao Bone pulsed beneath his skin like a second heart, violent and impatient. He welcomed the pain. Pain meant progress: the marrow reforging, meridians widening, thresholds bleeding into new capacity. He drew his palms together and cycled Qi, letting the air of the pass fill him. Stone and wind and thin pine-scent soothed his edges—but only for a moment.
The System whispered in his mind, clinical and relentless.
> [This path is unstable. You risk self-destruction. Redirect cultivation toward hatred. Hatred fuels stability.]
Xieyun ground his teeth. "Shut up." His voice tasted of blood and iron. He refused the quick seduction of the System's calculus. He tightened his dantian and pushed beyond the ache, letting a tempest of flame and shadow churn his Qi. When it broke, a pressure wave thudded across the pavilion and rattled the wooden shutters.
He rose with the kind of stillness that precedes a roar. For a heartbeat he felt himself step, not merely into a new cultivation stage but closer to that impossible sky he had glimpsed—closer to her.
By noon, banners had begun to stream along the trade road below—the Jia Clan's red silk with interlocked blades. Heralds rode ahead of the main retinue; words and gold always traveled long before men did. Someone traveling the route would have carried the announcement, and the valley's gossip wheels turned quickly. Traders who had once bartered for his favors now whispered of the alliance; soldiers who had once supplied the Pavilion's training rings now cheered in the taverns.
At the Solitary Lotus Pavilion, a rider came without pomp. The messenger wore Jia colors, but his eyes were careful and weary; he had been sent to reach every corner of the pass.
He bowed once to the pavilion's low door and stepped inside with the practiced confidence of one used to meeting nobles who thought their world unbreachable. "To the one who keeps hearth in the pavilion," he announced, voice echoing against the wooden beams, "a scroll from the Jia Clan."
Xieyun took the scroll with a hand that did not tremble, yet his jaw tightened as he broke the wax. The wording was not an invitation but an assertion:
> "By decree of Jia Wenshan, the union between Jia Rong and Lian Zhe shall be publicized across the region. Those who oppose shall be regarded as hostile to the new order."
The parchment smoldered at the edge as if it could not bear the heat of what it declared. Xieyun let it burn a little in his fingers and watched ash tumble into the wind.
"Three months," he said aloud to the empty pavilion, and the words were lead in his mouth. "Three months to bind her to another name."
He did not worry for himself. He worried for the woman who had haunted his visions: for the soft imprint her image had left on his soul, for the ache that asked him to wait. The Jia–Lian alliance was not merely a political maneuver; it was a chain that would take a life he had never known and tie it to another's ledger.
Outside, the valley hummed with the news. The engagement proclamation would be a gauntlet thrown in the court of clans: challenge accepted, challenge denied—every clan would choose a side. Jia Wenshan's move was aggressive: he would show dominance, secure the Lian line's cooperation, and push a wedge between those who might stand against their influence.
Xieyun folded the burned scrap of parchment and tucked it into his sash. He sat a moment, feeling the echoes of the Immortal Plane simmer inside him like coals.
"You think it ends with vows?" he muttered. He rose, feeling the press of his Dao Bone as if it had weight in the world of men now. He pushed his palms to the sky and felt, rather than saw, the slivers of the Immortal Plane—golden towers like distant echoes and a voice in the dark urging retreat and caution.
The System tested him again. This time its tone was almost pleading, as if aware his choices could break or save it.
> [Your obsession with the phantom will destabilize growth. Embrace hatred. Embrace what strengthens.]
Xieyun smiled without humor. "I'll find another way," he said. Not to the System, not to the messenger, but to the sleeping pavilion, to the woman he could not yet name.
He went to the pavilion's cliff-edge and looked out where the road dwindled into ragged stone. Below, caravans rolled like small moons, unaware of the people whose lives pulsed around them. In three months a wedding would polish the Lian name with Jia gold. In three months, a life would be bound.
He curled his fingers around his spear. "I do not belong to their ledger," he told the wind. "If they bind her, I will tear the bargain. If they mark a life, I will cut the mark out."
He had no plan yet other than hunger and patience. The Immortal Plane would not wait forever, but neither would he give up a woman who haunted his marrow. He would grow, not as the System demanded, but in a way that could break both man-made chains and heavenly edicts if necessary.
Thunder rolled far off, not from storm but from some distant stir in the world's bones. The sky did not rain, yet the air felt charged—as if the world itself took note of the vow.
Xieyun straightened. The solitudes and smallness of the Solitary Lotus Pavilion did not mock him; they afforded him a place to plan. A road opened in his mind: secrets to collect, techniques to learn, allies to find. Three months was short, but not impossible.
He turned from the cliff and stepped into the pavilion. Behind him, the valley continued its small life. Ahead of him, a vastness waited—of politics, of power, and of the sky he had once touched. He would temper himself on his own terms.