The morning of Lanlan's departure was unnervingly still. A thick, silver fog had rolled down from the mountains, swallowing the village whole and muting the world to shades of grey. The usual cacophony of dawn, the roosters, the barking dogs, the distant chop of an axe- was absent, as if the world itself was holding its breath.
Lanlan stood by the old village well, a splash of impossible color in the monochrome landscape. She wore the formal robes of a Green Willow Pavilion disciple: pale green silk that seemed to drink the faint light, embroidered with intricate silver leaf patterns that shimmered with every slight movement. A small, practical travel pack was slung over her shoulder. There was no sword at her hip; that badge of honor would be earned later.
Yan Shen stood facing her, his arms crossed over his chest, his expression a carefully maintained mask of neutrality. They were not siblings by blood, but years of shared silence under the pine tree had forged a stronger bond. The air was thick with the unspoken words of a partnership that was now being severed.
The scene was flanked by both their families, a testament to how intertwined their lives had become. On one side stood Lanlan's parents, Shen Wei and his wife, Lin. Shen Wei, a quiet carpenter, stood tall and proud, his calloused hand resting on his wife's shoulder as she dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. On the other side were Yan Bao and Li Meiyan. Yan Bao leaned heavily on his cane, his face a landscape of pride for the girl he'd watched grow up and profound loss for the son who would now lose his closest friend. Li Meiyan twisted her hands in her apron, her eyes red-rimmed. She had always treated Lanlan like a daughter.
"You nervous?" Yan Shen asked finally, breaking the heavy silence.
Lanlan tilted her chin up, a gesture of false bravado he knew well. But her voice was thinner than usual, tight with a tension she couldn't fully hide. "A little. It's… a long way."
He gave a single, slow nod.
"And the emissary? Did he say anything else?" he pressed, his voice low.
She hesitated, glancing toward the mist where the man waited. "He said I won't be with the other new outer disciples. I'm to be a direct disciple of Elder Mei herself. They didn't just pick me for my root." She lowered her voice further. "He sensed… a 'cold potential' in my core. A rare affinity for movement Qi. Something that can't be taught."
Yan Shen's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. Inner Sect. Direct disciple. She wasn't just joining the sect; she was being fast-tracked into its heart.
"You're skipping the line," he stated, not with jealousy, but with a strategist's assessment.
A faint, wry smile touched her lips. "He also said there is no line for those born to jump."
He had no response to that. Instead, he reached into the sleeve of his rough-spun tunic and pulled out a simple, worn cloth band, frayed at the edges and stained with dirt and sweat, the kind they used to tie around their wrists during their hardest sparring sessions as children. He tossed it to her.
Lanlan caught it effortlessly. She looked down at the scrap of fabric, and a real, soft smile broke through her nervousness. "I'll wear it during my first official sparring match. So I remember who used to beat me black and blue."
"Used to?" Yan Shen raised a skeptical eyebrow.
The quiet was shattered by the soft, powerful rumble of hooves. From the mist emerged a carriage unlike anything Qinghe had ever seen. It was sleek and dark, built from a wood that seemed to absorb light, pulled by two massive Snow Yaks. Their coats were the color of fresh frost, and their breath plumed from their nostrils not as steam, but as a shimmering, spiritual mist that swirled with latent energy.
The time for words was over.
There was a flurry of movement. Lanlan's mother rushed forward, pulling her into a tearful, crushing embrace. Her father placed a firm, proud hand on her head. Li Meiyan was next, hugging Lanlan tightly, whispering a mother's blessings into her ear. Yan Bao limped forward and offered a rare, kind smile and a nod of deep respect.
Yan Shen simply met her eyes and gave one final, firm nod.
It was enough.
She turned, climbed into the waiting carriage, and without a backward glance, the vehicle glided forward, swallowed by the fog as completely as it had arrived. The silence it left behind was deafening.
The two families stood together for a moment longer in the mist, bound by the shared absence of the girl who had been a daughter to both households.
Two Months Later
Qinghe Village was unchanged. The same sun rose over the same mountains, the same people tended the same fields. But a palpable emptiness had taken root where Lanlan's presence had been. For Yan Shen, the quiet was no longer peaceful; it was a vacuum.
He trained with a ferocity that bordered on self-destruction. His body hardened, his strikes became sharper, his control over his dense, heavy Qi more precise. He pushed himself to the brink of exhaustion every single day. But it was a grinding, incremental progress. Lanlan's letters, delivered by a circuitous merchant route, were a constant reminder of the chasm widening between them.
She wrote of her rapid advancement, of already breaking through into the Late Qi Gathering Realm, of learning foundational sword forms and sect policies. He was still here, his power dense, potent, but infuriatingly stagnant, still solidifying his foundation in the early stages of Qi Gathering.
And yet, her words were not boasts; they were lifelines.
"The food is terrible. The seniors are arrogant. I miss the garden. I miss the pine tree."
And then, the line that burned itself into his mind:
"You're still there. Still you. And that's why I know you'll catch up in a way none of these polished disciples will ever see coming."
That Night, He Didn't Train
For the first time in months, Yan Shen abandoned his routine. He didn't perform the breathing exercises. He didn't cycle his Qi. He didn't practice forms under the stars.
He simply climbed onto the roof of the house, drew his knees to his chest, and stared into the vast, cold, indifferent tapestry of the night sky. The stars were pinpricks of ice, impossibly far away.
She's gone. You're still here.
The village slept below him. A deep, weary fatigue settled into his bones.
But in the core of his being, something dormant was stirring from its long slumber.
A Dream Came:
It was not a nightmare. It was not a memory. It was a transmission.
Yan Shen stood in the center of a blasted, unrecognizable plain under a sky torn by violet lightning. The air thrummed with the aftermath of cataclysm.
And standing before him, amidst the ruin, was a figure.
Not a god. Not a monster.
Himself.
Older. Tempered by unimaginable conflict. Blood sheeted one arm and dripped from a clenched fist. His clothes were torn, his body a map of fresh scars and bruises. But his posture was not one of exhaustion; it was one of terrifying readiness. He wasn't calm. He wasn't enraged. He was utterly, vibrantly alive.
"Power isn't what you're given," the dream-self said, his voice a graveled echo of Yan Shen's own, but layered with the weight of experience. "It's what you refuse to give away."
Yan Shen tried to speak, to ask a question, but his voice was stolen by the dream.
The storm-wracked sky behind his double cracked open further. Shapes moved in the chaos, world of unimaginable scale, beasts of shadow and iron, energies that defied the laws of this world. It was a war beyond his comprehension.
The dream-self just rolled his shoulders, cracked his neck with a sound like grinding stone, and offered a smile that was all sharp edges and defiant promise.
"You want strength, little spark?" he growled, his eyes locking onto Yan Shen's with terrifying intensity. "Then stop waiting for permission. Break the rules. Start with your own."
And then he moved.
He didn't run; he unleashed himself, a projectile of pure intent, shooting straight into the heart of the world-ending chaos.
Yan Shen could only watch as the scene erupted into a silent, blinding
He Woke Up Breathing Fire
His lungs were searing. His heart hammered against his ribs like a war drum. Every nerve ending screamed, his skin buzzing as if he'd been struck by lightning and was still conducting the charge.
He sat bolt upright on the roof, drenched in a cold sweat, his chest heaving. He clutched at his sternum, feeling not pain, but a profound, internal vortex.
His Qi wasn't just circulating. It was collapsing inward, condensing under a pressure he had never felt before, spinning into a core of incredible density. The barrier he'd been pushing against for months, the gate to the middle stages of Qi Gathering, didn't break,it vaporized. He through.
Then the voice came.
Not from his ears. Not from the room.
It resonated directly within his consciousness, cool, clear, and utterly devoid of emotion.
{
`Cognitive signature stabilized.`
`Internal integrity: 93%.`
`Command link initiated...`
}
Yan Shen's head snapped up, his eyes wide in the dark.
"What the—?"
Another pulse, deep and integrating, shot through him. It wasn't painful. It was the opposite: a final, satisfying click, like the last piece of a complex puzzle sliding into place after a lifetime of searching.
`Authorization granted.`
`Internal Protocol Awakening...`
He stumbled but managed to stand up, his legs unsteady, not from weakness but from the overwhelming flood of clarity. The fog of confusion about his nature, the frustration at his slow progress - it all burned away in an instant of terrifying understanding.
This was not just Qi.
This was something else. Something… Scientific.Engineered. Chosen.
It wasn't a spiritual root bestowed by heaven. It was a design. A system. A protocol written into the very code of his being.
He looked down at his hands. They were trembling, but with raw, unfiltered potential. A grin, wide and unhinged with awe and realization, spread across his face.
Then he threw his head back, his eyes blazing with a light that had nothing to do with the moon, and he screamed his triumph into the sleeping night:
"FINALLY! IT'S AWAKE!!"
The sound was a physical thing, a shockwave of pent-up energy and revelation. It ripped through the silent village, rattling shutters, startling birds from their roosts, and sending a rooster into a premature, confused crow.
Across Qinghe, oil lamps flickered to life behind paper windows.
And from inside the family hut, a new sound arose, small and fragile at first, then rising in pitch and urgency.
A wail.
It was a sound that cut through his euphoria more effectively than any blade. It yanked him back from the precipice of his awakening and anchored him firmly back to earth.
His baby sister.
The door to the hut slid open with a tired creak.
Yan Bao stood in the doorway, squinting against the lamplight, rubbing sleep from his eyes. His bad leg was stiff beneath him.
He looked at his son, standing half-dressed and wild-eyed in the predawn chill.
"…Boy," he said, his voice rough with sleep. "What in the world are you doing?"
Yan Shen just stared, his breath still coming in ragged gasps, the echoes of the system's voice still ringing in his skull.
His father sighed, a long, weary sound. He limped forward a couple of steps, his voice dropping to a low, admonishing whisper. "Don't go shouting like a madman in the middle of the night. You'll wake up the baby."
He glanced back over his shoulder toward the hut, from which the soft, needy whimpers of a distressed infant could still be heard.
"Your mother just got her to sleep."
The fight drained out of Yan Shen. The cosmic certainty receded, replaced by the simple, grounding reality of his father's disapproval and his sister's distress. He looked down at the damp ground.
"…Sorry," he mumbled, the word feeling utterly inadequate.
Inside the hut, the air was warm and carried the sweet scent of milk and sleep. A single oil lamp cast a soft glow. In the corner, a small woven cradle rocked gently.
Yan Xue.
His sister. A tiny bundle swaddled in thick blankets, her face red and crumpled from crying, her nose wrinkling as she fought to settle back into sleep.
Li Meiyan leaned over the cradle, humming a soft, ancient lullaby, her face etched with exhaustion and love.
"Shh… there now, little snow… it's alright…"
Yan Shen stepped inside slowly, moving with a newfound caution, avoiding the floorboards he knew would creak. He knelt beside the cradle, his own immense awakening forgotten for a moment. He stared at the perfect, fragile features of his sister.
She was so small. So utterly dependent. Unaware of systems or sect politics or the terrifying power now humming in her brother's veins.
Yet in that moment, her presence was the heaviest, most important thing in the world.
She's real.
And she's mine to protect.
He leaned closer, his voice a whisper so soft it was barely a breath, a vow made not to the heavens, but to the most vulnerable thing in his life:
"I'll get strong enough for both of us."