Night cloaked the Lin Clan estate in silence. The training grounds that had roared with voices hours ago now lay empty, bathed in silver moonlight.
Inside a small, half-forgotten courtyard on the estate's western edge, a single oil lamp flickered. Lin Tianhai sat cross-legged on the worn floorboards, the fragile scroll of the Bloodline Resonance Sutra spread before him. Its yellowed parchment bore broken diagrams—half of a fist technique here, fragmented meridian routes there—like a map with its heart torn away.
He traced each character with calloused fingers, lips moving silently.
"Blood is the root, resonance the bridge. Inherit not from the past, but from the river yet to flow…"
The words made little sense. Resonance with the future? Even a child knew qi could only be drawn from heaven, earth, and self. The ancestors' techniques were about tracing lineage backward, not forward. And yet—when Tianhai closed his eyes, a strange warmth lingered in his chest, as though the Sutra itself were breathing.
The door creaked open. His younger cousin, Lin Zhen, slipped inside without waiting for permission. A smirk curled his lips.
"Still playing with scraps, cousin? The elders already say you're hopeless. If you really want to prove yourself, why not step into the sparring grounds tomorrow? Oh wait—" His eyes glittered with mockery. "You'd just collapse before throwing a punch."
Tianhai's jaw tightened, but he said nothing. Words against Zhen, the favored grandson of an elder, would only dig his grave deeper.
Zhen leaned closer, voice dropping to a whisper. "When the family holds its selection next month, those with no talent will be cast aside. You'll lose even this courtyard. Remember that."
His footsteps faded, leaving Tianhai alone with the lamp's flickering glow. The boy stared at the Sutra until his vision blurred. His heart pounded, not from fear—but from a fierce, rising refusal.
He shut his eyes. The words on the scroll echoed in his mind. Blood is the root… resonance the bridge. Suddenly, the world tilted.
A tremor surged through him, and the lamp's flame bent unnaturally, as if pulled by unseen breath. In the darkness behind his eyelids, Tianhai saw something impossible: a battlefield drenched in crimson, where an armored figure raised a fist that split mountains. The figure turned—and though his face was hidden, Tianhai felt a jolt of recognition, as though the man were his kin.
A whisper followed, carried through the void
"Do not bow, Tianhai. The bloodline remembers."
He gasped, eyes snapping open. His body trembled, sweat beading on his forehead. For the first time, qi had moved—thin, fragile, but real—trickling through his stubborn meridians like water finding a crack in stone.
The Sutra's fragments glowed faintly under the lamplight. Outside, the clan estate slept on, unaware. But in that lonely courtyard, a cripple's fate had begun to shift.