The sunset over the Silver-River region usually looked like a spill of liquid gold, but today, it was the color of a fading bruise.
Li Fan sat on the edge of the Thousand-Step Stairs, his legs dangling over a precipice that had once been the pride of the Sunset Sect. Now, the stone was cracked, choked with gray moss and the stubborn weeds that thrived on the thin, resentful Qi of a dying mountain.
He exhaled, watching the mist curl around his boots. In his chest, he felt a familiar, hollow ache—the slow, rhythmic hiss of his Qi leaking away. He was eighteen, the Sect Leader of a lineage that stretched back three thousand years, and he was effectively a mortal.
"Leaking Meridians," the healers in Cloud-Pass City had called it. A "Void Sink" constitution. No matter how much Qi he absorbed from the morning sun or the rare stalks of spirit-grain Jing'er brought him, it simply escaped, returning to the world as if his body were a sieve.
"Sect Leader?"
A soft voice drifted from behind a weathered stone pillar.
Li Fan didn't turn. He knew the gait—light, hesitant, and carrying the faint scent of charcoal and wild mint. Jing'er. She was the last disciple who hadn't fled to the Iron Fist Hall or the merchant guilds in the valley.
"The tea is getting cold," she said, stepping into the dim light. She held a chipped porcelain cup with both hands, as if it were a sacred relic.
"Thank you, Jing'er," Li Fan said, taking the cup. The warmth seeped into his numb fingers.
He took a sip. It was bitter—made from the sun-dried roots of mountain grass rather than true tea leaves—but it was hot.
"The Iron Fist Hall's collectors... they were at the foot of the mountain again today," Jing'er whispered, her eyes fixed on the horizon. "They didn't come up, but they left a mark on the boundary stone. Three days, Sect Leader. They say if we don't pay the 'protection tribute' by then, the Sunset Mountain will belong to them."
Li Fan looked down at the scratched porcelain. Protection tribute. It was a nice way of saying 'extortion.' The Sunset Sect was a 5th-rate power in a 3rd-rate region, and they couldn't even afford the copper to buy oil for the lamps.
"I know," he murmured.
"Is there... is there truly no word from the Ancestral Hall?" she asked, her voice trembling slightly.
Li Fan looked up at the skeletal ruins of the Great Hall behind them. The roof had collapsed during the last winter storm, leaving the statues of their ancestors to gaze at the empty sky.
"The ancestors are sleeping, Jing'er. And the mountain is tired."
He stood up, the effort making his vision swim for a brief second. He was a Level 0 Mortal. To the world, he was a placeholder. A name on a deed that hungry men wanted to tear up.
As he turned to follow Jing'er back toward the kitchen huts, a strange sensation prickled the back of his neck.
It wasn't a threat. It wasn't the cold.
It was a shimmer of ethereal ink, bleeding into the very fabric of the air.
In the corner of his right eye, a thin, translucent scroll appeared, unfurling in empty space like a reflection on clear water. It was ghostly, nearly invisible, but as he focused on it, the ancients scripts within began to glow.
[THE ANCIENT MIRROR OF RESONANCE]
RESONANCE MARK: ONE DROP OF INK ...
Li Fan froze. He blinked, expecting the hallucination to vanish under the weight of his exhaustion. Instead, the scroll remained, a rhythmic pulse of soft azure light beating in time with his own heart.
RESONANCE MARK: FIVE DROPS OF INK ...
"Sect Leader? Is something wrong?" Jing'er turned back, her brow furrowed in concern.
Li Fan didn't answer. He watched as a second inscription flickered beneath the scroll, written in an elegant, celestial script that his eyes shouldn't have been able to read, yet his soul understood with a jarring clarity.
[THE GREAT PATH: TEN THOUSAND YEARS HENCE]
HEAVENLY COOLDOWN: TWENTY-NINE SUNS, TWELVE WATCHES.
"The future," Li Fan whispered, his grip tightening on the empty cup until the porcelain groaned.
The scroll continued to unfurl, slow and steady—a thread of fate being cast into a deep, silent ocean.
"Sect Leader?" Jing'er took a step toward him, reaching out a hand.
Li Fan looked at her, then back at the floating azure script. For the first time in eighteen years, the hollow ache in his chest didn't feel like a leak. It felt like a cauldron being prepared for a divine flame.
"Nothing, Jing'er," he said, his voice steadier than it had been in months. "I think... I think I just found our ancestor's true legacy."