One hundred years earlier—
The heavens trembled.
Not with storm, but with transformation—a reshaping of fate itself.
High above the mortal world, atop a lonely peak known in ancient scrolls as Sky-Sundering Ridge, a man sat cross-legged upon an ancient stone dais. The dais was no ordinary rock; it was the Storm-Anchor Plinth, carved millennia ago by a forgotten sect to channel celestial energy. Its surface was etched with runes older than empires, grooves stained dark with the spiritual residue of cultivators who had dared this same ascent—and some who had failed, leaving only whispers in the stone.
Clouds drifted like silent witnesses below, cotton-white and slow. Above, the sky was a dome of impossible blue, clear and depthless.
Winds fierce enough to strip flesh from bone howled around him, carrying with them the faint scent of ozone and eternity—the smell of lightning yet to fall. Yet his dark robes, simple in cut but woven from Shadow-Silk of the Western Vale, did not so much as flutter. They clung to his form as if painted on by night itself. His long black hair floated upward, lifted not by wind but by the unimaginable force gathering within him, each strand alive with static energy that sparked faintly in the thinning air.
Han Li did not blink.
He did not breathe.
He was stillness—absolute and unbroken—a statue of intent in a world of motion.
Inside him, power surged.
His meridians, those rivers of energy that carried cultivation's will, glowed like molten gold beneath his skin. They stretched to their very limits, threatening to unravel the mortal coil that housed them. He could feel them—thin as over-tightened strings, singing with strain. At his core, a flawless Golden Core pulsed.
Once…
Twice…
A sphere of condensed lifespan,ambition, and comprehension—the culmination of a century's solitude, struggle, and sacrifice. It hovered in his lower dantian, spinning slowly, emitting a light that only his inner vision could see.
Then—
Crack.
A thin, hairline fissure appeared across its perfect surface, like the first fracture in winter ice. A soundless split that echoed through his soul.
Han Li's mind remained calm, sharp as a blade honed in silence. He had anticipated this. Prepared for it through ten years of meditation in the Cave of Echoing Regrets.
A seed must break before it can sprout,he recited inwardly, the words borrowed from the Scripture of Unfolding Dao.
A life must end before a greater one begins.
Another pulse of energy, deep and resonant as a temple bell.
Another fracture—this one branched,splintering like a frozen lake struck by stone.
And then—shattering.
A silent explosion of light erupted within him, brighter than any sun he had ever witnessed. It was not a light that illuminated—it was a light that replaced. For a moment, Han Li did not have a body. He was consciousness floating in a sea of gold and white.
Pain followed. Vast. Unbearable.
It wasn't merely physical—it was memory,regret, fear, and ambition all ignited at once. The death of his master on the Bloodstone Plateau. The betrayal at Vermilion Bird City. The loneliness of decades in remote mountains. The hunger of his mortal childhood—a hollow, aching memory that somehow burned sharper than the rest. This pain could destroy body, mind, and soul. Any other cultivator would have collapsed, their consciousness scattered like dust in a typhoon.
Han Li endured.
He was a cliff against the tide.
Around him, the ancient runes carved into the dais ignited with blinding azure light. Chains of luminous script—words of binding and protection in the Language of Founding—rose from the stone, wrapping around his form like glowing serpents. They sealed the violent transformation, containing the erupting energy so his body would not tear itself apart. The air hummed with a deep, resonant frequency that vibrated in the very bones of the mountain. Far below, loose stones shivered and rolled.
Within the chaos, something began to form.
Small at first—no larger than a spark at the end of a blown-out candle.
Then clearer.A tiny, radiant outline.
Then whole.
A luminous infant, glowing with soft inner light, curled in quiet repose within the ruins of his Golden Core. Its skin seemed made of solidified moonlight. Its face was a mirror of Han Li's own, yet untouched by time or hardship.
His Nascent Soul.
Its eyes opened—and they were his eyes. Ancient, knowing, yet newborn. They held the stillness of deep space and the potential of a seed awaiting spring.
The heavens responded.
From a cloudless sky, bolts of violet-gold lightning—Heavenly Tempest Qi—crashed downward. Not to annihilate, but to temper. To test. Each strike merged into the swirling vortex of spiritual energy above the peak, feeding the transformation. The infant soul did not flinch. It raised a tiny hand, palm open, and the lightning coiled around its fingers like tame serpents before being absorbed into its form. With every pulse of thunder, the soul grew more solid, more detailed—tiny fingernails, faint eyelashes, the subtle curve of a calm smile. More alive.
This was the Heavenly Tempest Trial, the final examination for those who dared to reach beyond mortality. Nine bolts in total. Each carried a fragment of heavenly law. Han Li counted them in his soul—three for body, three for mind, three for spirit.
Time blurred.
There was no world.
No noise.
Only ascent—a pulling upward of his very essence.
At last, when the ninth and final arc of lightning faded into his Nascent Soul's chest, stillness returned. A stillness vaster and deeper than before, as if the universe itself were holding its breath.
Han Li opened his eyes.
He did not shout in triumph.
He did not smile.
His expression was calm—so calm it bordered on divine.His gaze held a depth like stars reflected in still water, holding eons in a single glance. The winds had died. His hair settled softly around his shoulders. The runes on the dais dimmed, their light fading back into the stone, leaving the etchings slightly more pronounced, slightly more worn.
Within his dantian, a gentle yet eternal pulse radiated. His Nascent Soul rested there—quiet, powerful, a second consciousness now linked to his own. He was no longer merely human. He had taken the first true step upon the immortal path. He was now a Nascent Soul cultivator—a being who could live a thousand years, command spells that could level mountains, and sense the flow of fate itself.
"It is done," he whispered, the words barely stirring the air, yet they carried weight, as if sealing a pact with the Dao.
And in that silence… a memory surfaced.
Han li rememberd now how he started cultivation first, that hunger and poverty.
Suddenly.
Not a vision—not a clear scene.
But ascent: rain on dry earth after a long drought. The petrichor of hope.
Asound: a woman's voice, humming a lullaby he could no longer recall the words to. The melody was warmth and safety.
Afeeling: an empty stomach, trembling from hunger so deep it felt like a hollow tree. The gnawing that no power could ever fully make him forget.
The immortal peak faded, the runes dimming, the celestial energy dissipating like mist in morning sun.
But the memory did not fade.
It pulled—a spiritual gravity drawing his thoughts downward,backward, to a time before gold cores, before qi, before he knew what a cultivator was.
---
One hundred years ago—
The immortal peak vanished.
In its place stood a sun-scorched village at the edge of nowhere, beneath a sky so wide and blue it felt like a bowl placed upside-down over the world. This was Lingshui Village, though little water remained to justify the name.
A boy sat alone in the dust, knees drawn to his chest, staring at the boundless expanse with eyes far too sharp for his age. Eyes that saw not just clouds, but patterns. Not just sky, but distance. Eyes that belonged to a dreamer, or a seer—or both.
That boy was him.
Han Li.Seven years old.
The beginning was calling back.
---
Lingshui Village lived in halves—a truth every child learned before they could walk properly.
The east held life. Humble mud-brick homes with roofs of sun-baked tile stood in neat, stubborn rows. From Old Wang's clay oven near the communal well came the smell of warm bread at dusk—a scent that meant survival, not luxury. The soft ringing of children's laughter echoed there, bouncing off walls painted white with crushed limestone. Green hills, lush with stubborn pine and tenacious grass, curved protectively around this half, cradling the village like a mother shielding her child from the outside world. Here, the earth was stubborn but kind, yielding just enough sweet potatoes, millet, and cabbages to keep hope alive. This was the Green Cradle.
The west was a wound.
A stretch of land known as theBarren Strip or, in hushed tones, The Earth's Scar. Cracked earth split open like a thousand thirsty mouths, zigzagging across the landscape in a chaotic web. The merciless drought had lasted three summers now. The air there tasted of ash and dryness, carrying fine, pale dust that coated the tongue. Even the wind felt coarse and angry against the skin. Here, a single bowl of watery gruel, shared between siblings, was a treasure. Hunger wasn't a visitor—it ruled. It sat at every table, slept in every bed, stared out from every pair of sunken eyes. The village elders said the land was touched by forgotten earth-qi corruption, a blight from a cultivator battle fought centuries past. Parents told children not to play there, lest the barrenness cling to their spirit and stunt their growth.
Between both worlds, in that very strip of cursed nothing, the boy lay on his back, ignoring the elders' warnings.
His clothing was a map of his family's love and their poverty—a patched shirt of faded indigo, trousers shortened and hemmed twice as he grew, stitches neat and tight from his aunt's needle. The fabric was worn thin as an old prayer, threads bare at the elbows and knees. But his face did not match the poverty around him. His features were refined, clean, almost delicate—like moonlight reflected in still water. A straight nose, dark eyebrows, lips that seemed better suited to reciting poetry than begging for scraps. It was a face that seemed borrowed from some other story, some other, gentler life. A face that drew second glances and quiet questions.
Around his left wrist hung a single wooden bead, tied with a faded red string. Dark as heartwood, smooth as river stone, and completely unblemished. It had always been there. His mother, before the fever took her, said she found it in his crib the morning he was born, cool against his tiny chest. No one knew who placed it. It never warmed in the sun, never cooled in the night frost, never cracked or chipped. It just was—a quiet mystery. Sometimes, in his deepest sleep, he thought it pulsed, faintly, like a sleeping heartbeat.
The boy wasn't looking at the dirt beneath him, at the cracks that seemed to whisper of thirst.
His eyes followed the drifting clouds—great, slow-moving ships of white against the endless blue. He imagined their shapes: a dragon, a turtle, a vast, outstretched hand.
"Where do you go?" he whispered, his voice barely louder than the breeze that skittered dust over the cracks. "Old Zhang says cultivators live up there, beyond the sky. In mountains that touch the stars, where palaces float on clouds of silver."
The word lingered in the dry, still air. Cultivators. It tasted of mystery and power.
"He says they sit still as mountains for a hundred years. That they don't die. That they never feel… this."
He pressed a hand to his stomach, where the hollow ache was a constant companion, a familiar emptiness that shaped his days.
"…this emptiness."
His voice softened, wistful, as if sharing a secret with the sky itself.
"He says they ride swords of light and chase the wind. That they command thunder with a glance and drink moonlight to nourish their souls."
A small, fragile smile curved his lips—a smile that held more longing than joy. It transformed his delicate face, making him look both younger and impossibly older.
"Can you imagine?"
Above him, the clouds drifted lazily on a high-altitude current—yet one small wisp, thin and frayed as a thread of silk from a grand robe, seemed to hesitate. To pause directly overhead, as if caught on an invisible hook.
As if listening.
As if responding.
For a single, suspended heartbeat, the boy thought he saw it glow—faintly, softly, a shimmer of pearl-white against the blue, like a distant lantern seen through fog. The air around him felt stiller, heavier, as if time had thickened.
Then the breeze picked up—a dry, mundane gust from the west—and the wisp unraveled, continuing its journey eastward, carrying his whispered dream upward and away, toward the horizon where the sky met the distant purple shadows of mountains he had never seen, mountains named in stories: the Azure Mist Range.
---
A low rumble echoed in the distance—not thunder, but the grinding of wooden cart wheels on hard, rutted earth. The sound of the mundane world returning.
The boy's moment of solitary communion shattered.
"Han Li!"
The voice was rough from years of calling across fields. Warm with a familiarity that bypassed the ears and went straight to the heart. Real in a way dreams were not.
His eyes—those too-sharp, too-old eyes—snapped open wide. The dream of clouds and cultivators scattered like startled birds, leaving behind the familiar, dusty reality.
A bright, unguarded smile lit his face, erasing the lingering wistfulness. The careful stillness of the observer was replaced by pure, youthful energy. He leaped to his feet in one fluid motion, dust puffing up in soft clouds around his ankles, and ran toward the voice with a speed born of countless repetitions.
At the edge of the farmland path, where the Barren Strip met the first stubborn patches of scrub grass and resilient wild onions, stood a man.
He was dressed in work clothes of coarse, undyed hemp, patched at the elbows and knees with darker fabric. A heavy bundle of freshly cut firewood—Iron-Oak, good for long, hot burns—was slung over his shoulder with a practiced ease. Yet his posture was steady like an old tree that had weathered countless storms, roots deep. His hands, resting on the rope binding the wood, were broad and calloused, maps of labor.
His face was lined by sun and sorrow, grooves etched beside his eyes and across his forehead. But his eyes—those were his most striking feature. They carried a warmth soft as early spring sunlight, the kind that promises thaw after a long winter. They were the eyes of a man who had seen hardship but chose kindness anyway.
Those eyes crinkled at the corners as they landed on the boy, taking in the dust on his clothes, the faint, faraway look still clinging to his gaze like cobwebs.
Han Li skidded to a stop before him, breathless, his earlier melancholy gone without a trace. In its place was the simple, anchoring joy of being seen, being known, being called. This was his tether to the world.
The man studied him for a second—a silent assessment—and his expression softened further, touched with something like understanding, and perhaps a trace of worry. He shifted the weight of the firewood, the cords of muscle in his neck tightening briefly, then reached out a calloused hand and placed it firmly on Han Li's slender shoulder. The grip was strong, grounding, a solid anchor in a shifting world.
"Daydreaming again, boy?" the man said, his tone a gentle rumble, like stones settling in a creek bed. "The clouds won't fill your belly. Come." He nodded his head toward the east, toward the smoke rising from clustered hearths. "Your aunt has stew simmering. Rabbit, maybe. Old Tan set snares in the north hill."
He leaned in slightly then, lowering his voice as if sharing a secret of great importance, one that required conspiracy. The scent of pine resin, sweat, and honest earth came with him.
"…And I found a patch of wild ginger near the creek bend, where the water still trickles. She's making flatbreads tonight. The good kind, with scallions."
The promise hung in the air—more than food. It was the promise of warmth, of family gathered around a central pot, of stories told in low voices, of a safe corner in a hard world. It was enough. It was everything.
Han Li nodded, his smile widening until it reached his eyes, making them sparkle. The mysterious wooden bead on his wrist, which had lain cool and inert, felt suddenly, briefly warm against his skin—a pulse of heat so quick he might have imagined it. A coincidence of sunlight, surely.
He fell into step beside the man, his smaller strides matching the man's slower, burdened pace. Their shadows, cast by the westering sun, merged into one long, distorted shape on the pale, dusty path as they turned toward home, toward the east, toward the light and the smell of bread.
Toward the only world he had ever known.
Second Uncle.
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