The night smelled of wet earth and starlight.
Lin Yan pressed his forehead to the cold iron of the cemetery gate, listening to the wind argue with the cypress trees. Beyond the village, the Qinghe River glugged like a drunkard, but here everything was still, as though even ghosts feared to speak. He had turned sixteen today. No one remembered. His only gift was a new mound of soil—grave number two-hundred and forty-seven—and the knowledge that tomorrow the disciples of Heaven's Will Sect would arrive to decide who among the village children was worthy of cultivation.
He tightened the rope belt of his hemp robe and stepped inside. The graves were simple: wooden plaques, names scrawled in fading cinnabar. Most belonged to wandering cultivators who had died chasing immortality and ended up food for crows. Lin Yan swept the path, humming a lullaby his foster mother once sang. She had died two winters ago, coughing blood into the snow while he held her hand, feeling it cool from flesh to jade.
When the last leaf was gathered, he sat on the stone tortoise that guarded the oldest tomb—name worn smooth—and looked at the sky. Stars glimmered like spilled salt, steady, eternal. Then one moved.
Lin Yan blinked. The star slid sideways, trailing silver. A second followed, then a third, until seven stars marched backward across the heavens, carving a crooked scar. His heart thumped. Grandmother Mei had spoken of such omens: Daoless Moon, when Heaven's ledger opened and names were erased. He counted under his breath, reaching seven just as a black meteor tore the sky and plummeted beyond the eastern ridge.
The cemetery lamps guttered. Wind twisted into a spiral, lifting dust and dead petals. Lin Yan's first instinct was to run; instead he gripped the broom handle until knuckles whitened. The meteor had landed near the burial ground. If it set the woods afire, the village would blame him—always him, the orphan who talked to corpses.
He vaulted the low wall and sprinted along the ridge path. Night insects shrilled. The meteor's descent had scorched a crimson seam through the clouds, painting the landscape blood-orange. When he reached the impact site, he expected charred trees and burning soil. Instead he found a perfect circle of frost. At its center lay a shard of jade no larger than his palm, obsidian-black yet translucent, as though night had been distilled into glass. Symbols crawled across its surface, rearranging like startled fish. They formed two characters he knew too well: Lin Yan.
A voice spoke—not with sound, but with memory. You were never supposed to be born.
He staggered back. The frost crept toward his sandals, crackling. Cold bit his toes, then his ankles, locking him in place. The shard levitated, rotating slowly. Images flashed across his mind: a lotus blooming in darkness, a city of jade falling from the sky, a woman weeping tears that turned into swords. The final image was himself, older, clad in armor of shadow, driving a blade through a sun.
The frost shattered. Lin Yan fell to his knees, gasping. The shard dropped into the grass, dull now, as if exhausted. He snatched it, heart hammering, and fled back to the cemetery. When he dared look again, the shard reflected only moonlight, his name vanished. He tucked it inside the pouch that held his mother's hairpin, beneath his bedding in the tool shed, and tried to convince himself he had imagined everything. Sleep did not come.
---
Morning arrived like a judgment. Gongs rang; children in clean robes were herded toward the village square. Lin Yan watched from behind a cedar, unnoticed. Red silk banners snapped above the eaves of the ancestral hall, embroidered with the character for Heaven. A platform of white jade had been erected overnight, bearing a crystal as tall as a man. Around it stood three youths in cobalt robes, swords strapped to their backs, their eyes holding the detached curiosity of cats observing ants. Elders bustled, offering tea, bowing so low their beards swept dust.
The trial began. One by one, children stepped forward, placed a palm on the crystal, and waited. Most produced faint colors—emerald, amber, azure—indicating elemental affinities. Parents cheered or sighed. When little A-Ling, the baker's daughter, caused the crystal to sing and blossom into a lotus of light, the disciples' indifference cracked. They recorded her name with golden ink.
Lin Yan felt a tug in his chest—half longing, half dread. He had no sponsor, no money to bribe his way into the queue, yet if he missed this chance he would spend life sweeping graves, whispering to bones. When the final child was tested, he stepped from the shadows. Murmurs rippled. The village chief frowned.
"You are not on the register," a disciple said. His voice carried the chill of high mountains.
"My parents died before they could enter me," Lin Yan lied. He kept his gaze lowered, respectful.
The disciple sighed but gestured toward the crystal. "Place your hand."
Lin Yan obeyed. The surface was warm, pulsing like a second heart. He waited for color, light, anything. The crystal remained translucent, reflecting only his own gaunt face. A snicker arose. Still nothing. The warmth cooled; the pulse faded. Silence thickened into something shameful.
The disciple withdrew a bronze mirror, tapped it, frowned. "No resonance. No root. No Dao." He looked at Lin Yan as though examining a defective pot. "This boy is suzi—empty."
The word slashed deeper than any sword. Elders recoiled; mothers pulled children close, as if emptiness were contagious. The chief raised his staff.
"Leave this place, cursed one. Your presence defiles Heaven's gift."
Lin Yan's tongue stuck to his palate. He wanted to explain about the meteor, the shard, the voice, but he knew how madness sounded. He bowed, turned, and walked. Behind him, the crystal brightened again for the next child, colors swirling like laughter.
---
He did not return to the cemetery. Instead he climbed the western hill where wild peaches grew, seating himself beneath a stunted tree whose fruit never ripened. From here the village resembled a toy box flung open: houses neat as dice, river glinting like a thrown ribbon. He drew the jade shard from his pouch. It lay inert, denying last night's wonder. Perhaps he was empty, a cracked jar unable to hold even a drop of destiny.
Footsteps rustled. His foster sister, Wan-Er, emerged, carrying a cloth bundle. Her cheeks bore the flush of excitement; the crystal had shown her water aptitude, second grade. She would leave for Heaven's Will Sect at dawn.
"Mother sent food," she said, not meeting his eyes. "For the road." She set the bundle between them: two steamed buns speckled with sesame, a strip of dried pork, a paper envelope of copper coins—generous, final.
"Congratulations," Lin Yan managed.
She hugged her knees. "They say you'll bring bad luck if you stay. That your emptiness invites ghosts." A pause. "I defended you. But..."
"But you believe them."
Wan-Er bit her lip. "I have to think of my future." She stood, brushing dust from her skirt. "Don't hate us, Yan-Ge." She used the old affectionate term, then flinched as if catching herself. Before he could answer she hurried downhill, braid swinging like a pendulum counting lost seconds.
Lin Yan ate one bun, tasting nothing, and hurled the other into the valley. He watched it bounce, a white speck soon swallowed by green. Then he descended the opposite slope, toward the cemetery that had been both cradle and prison. Twilight bled across the horizon; fireflies embroidered the path. He gathered dry wood, built a small pyre in front of the tool shed. Into it he tossed his broom, his tattered blanket, the pouch with his mother's hairpin. Flames leapt, crackling like cruel applause. He would burn everything, walk into the mountains, and let wolves erase the error called Lin Yan.
Heat kissed his face; sparks spiraled toward indifferent stars. The jade shard grew warm against his chest. He pulled it free—and the world lurched. Graves erupted in geysers of soil. Coffin planks exploded skyward like startled birds. From the largest tomb, sealed for centuries, rose a woman.
She hovered an arm's length above the ground, robes the hue of midnight water, hair cascading like spilled ink. Her feet were bare, unblemished by grave dust. Eyes the color of early dawn fixed on him.
"You are the last key," she said. Her voice held the echo of temple bells beneath the sea. "The Heaven Gate is not broken. It was sealed because of you."
Lin Yan's knees buckled. "Who... what are you?"
"I am what remains when promises rot." She extended a hand; black petals drifted from her fingertips, each inscribed with characters that bled and healed. "You died once, wielding a sword carved from your own heart. Heaven feared your return, so it culled your Dao. Yet here you stand, a candle refusing wind."
The flames behind him died, as if sucked into another sky. Cemetery air grew dense, scented with iron and lotus. The woman floated closer. Lin Yan smelled rain on tombstones.
"Choose," she whispered. "Forget, and live as dust. Or remember, and bleed galaxies."
Images slammed into him: a battlefield spanning planets, himself clad in armor of swirling void, fighting golden giants who sang hymns that shattered moons. He saw a lotus of black flame bloom beneath his ribs, felt a blade snap in his grip, tasted blood that was also starlight. And he heard his own voice, ancient and terrible: If Heaven denies me, I will deny Heaven.
Memory collapsed. He lay on dew-cool grass, the woman kneeling, palm pressed over his heart. A black lotus mark seared through his hemp robe, branding skin without pain. Light pulsed once—like a door acknowledging a key—and vanished.
"Awaken, Daoless One," she said, and her body dissolved into fireflies that rained back into the torn earth. Graves settled, soil smoothing as if never disturbed. Only the scent of iron lingered.
Lin Yan sat up, chest aching with something too large for ribs. Dawn edged the east, painting clouds the color of old bruises. He touched the lotus mark; it felt neither hot nor cold, simply present, like an unspoken word. Inside his pouch, the jade shard had cracked, revealing a sliver of darkness that wriggled, eager.
He looked at the village lights beginning to kindle, at the road that led away from them into misted mountains, at the cemetery gate yawning behind him like a mouth that had tasted galaxies. For the first time in sixteen years, Lin Yan felt full—not of hope, but of hunger.
He stood, brushed dirt from his knees, and walked uphill, toward the ridge where the black meteor had fallen. Somewhere inside, a voice—not the woman's, not his own—whispered: The gate is within you. Break it.
And for the first time, Lin Yan remembered dying.
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End of Chapter 1