The silence between them stretched, thick and heavy as the lingering scent of herbs in the air.

  Mo Chen did not move from his place beside the bed. His posture was relaxed, yet his presence filled the space like an unsheathed blade, effortless, waiting.

  Xu Lian shifted against the mattress, her limbs sluggish, her body sore, but she was alive. That much she knew.

  Mo Chen’s gaze flickered, tracing the subtle tension in her movements. Her slender fingers briefly tightened around the jade amulet before she forced herself to sit up.

  A delicate creature. Too thin.

  He had seen birds with more weight to them, their fragile bones hidden beneath layers of soft feather. Xu Lian was all lean strength, the kind forged from necessity, from constant movement, from a life that had never allowed stillness.

  Yet, despite the exhaustion written into her frame, there was something unbreakable about her.

  A reed bent by the wind, but never broken.

  The long strands of her dark hair, loosened from their braid, slipped forward. They brushed against her shoulders like silk unraveling in moonlight. The candlelight wove through the tangled strands, revealing hidden hues of deep chestnut, the warmth of burnt amber at the edges.

  A contrast to the bruising beneath her skin. A contrast to the hollow ache in her gaze.

  Mo Chen’s eyes flickered lower, noting the way her hands trembled, just slightly, almost imperceptibly.

  He did not offer to steady them.

  Instead, he spoke.

  "Why are you here?"

  His voice was low and smooth, with the kind of cold detachment one might use when observing a stray traveler who had wandered too far from the road.

  Xu Lian exhaled, rubbing a hand over her forehead as if that might clear the lingering haze in her mind.

  "You mean this temple?" she asked, her voice still hoarse, her throat raw.

  Mo Chen did not answer. He simply watched.

  His silence was an expectation.

  Xu Lian swallowed, gathering her thoughts. "I heard rumors. That somewhere in these mountains, there was once a master, a cultivator who stood above all others. Someone who had touched the heavens themselves."

  A flicker of something passed through Mo Chen’s gaze.

  "Old myths," he said, his tone unreadable.

  Xu Lian gave a slow shrug, shifting against the weight of her own exhaustion. "Aren’t all myths just stories waiting to be proven true?"

  His eyes lingered on her for a fraction too long before he shifted his attention elsewhere. He idly traced his fingers over the edge of the bedside table, where a thin layer of dust had settled.

  "And what did you hope to find?"

  She hesitated, staring down again at the amulet in her hands. The jade was cool now, no longer glowing, no longer humming.

  "Knowledge," she admitted. "A chance to learn from someone who had walked the path I can only dream of. Someone who could teach me how to wield not just a sword, but the spirit itself."

  Mo Chen was silent for a moment.

  She sought the past. The past was a river that had already run its course, its waters long since spilled into the vast, indifferent sea. To search for it—to try and gather it back into cupped hands, was nothing more than a fool’s indulgence.

  Yet, there was something in her words, in the way she held the amulet, that stirred a memory he had long buried.

  A memory of another seeker, another dreamer, who had once stood where she now sat.

  "And if this master is gone?" he asked, his voice quieter now, almost gentle.

  Xu Lian’s fingers tightened around the jade. "Then I’ll find what they left behind. A scroll, a technique, a single word of wisdom, anything that could help me understand. Anything that could bring me closer to the heavens."

  Her voice was steady, but there was a fire in her eyes, a determination that refused to be extinguished.

  Mo Chen exhaled softly, the sound almost imperceptible.

  "You climbed these mountains alone," he said, not as a question, but as a statement.

  She nodded, her gaze never leaving his. "I had to. I only have myself."

  She had long since grown weary of the way people hesitated when they realized she traveled alone. The flicker of surprise in their eyes, the poorly concealed skepticism, as if the idea of a young woman surviving on her own was some great impossibility.

  She was not fragile porcelain, nor some lost pet in need of guidance. She had stitched her own wounds, fought her own battles, starved, bled, and endured without anyone to catch her should she fall.

  If that made her reckless, so be it.

  But she would not apologize for it. Not to men who had never walked a road without the comfort of certainty, nor to those who mistook solitude for weakness.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Of course, even she had to admit her encounter with the 噬魄妖 had been a bit much.

  Xu Lian had handled plenty of things on her own before, bandits, wild beasts, unscrupulous merchants who thought they could swindle a lone traveler. But a soul-devouring demon? That was, admittedly, a little outside her expertise.

  She huffed a small laugh, shaking her head. “Alright, fine. Maybe that was a bit ambitious. Even I have limits.”

  Still, just because she had nearly died didn’t mean she was helpless. She had survived, hadn’t she? Mostly.

  So if Mo Chen or anyone else thought she was some delicate, clueless wanderer, they were in for a surprise. One bad decision didn’t erase ten years of experience.

  She continued, "I left home when I was fourteen. I’ve been traveling ever since."

  Mo Chen raised a brow. "Fourteen?"

  She nodded, rubbing at her wrist absently.

  "My mother died when I was young. I don’t even remember her. My father—" She hesitated, glancing past Mo Chen to the flickering brazier light. "—he was occupied."

  There was no bitterness in her tone. No grief, no lingering resentment.

  Just the quiet acceptance of someone who had long since made peace with what was.

  "He did what he could," she said, as if she needed to explain herself more to him. "He worked hard, kept us alive. But that was all he had the energy for. He didn’t have time to do anything but work and sleep. I was a burden to him.”

  Mo Chen listened, silent.

  She inhaled deeply. "So I taught myself," she continued, shifting her weight so she could sit straighter, despite the ache settling deep in her bones. "I learned by watching, by listening. I picked up things along the way."

  A pause.

  Her fingers brushed against the amulet again, rolling the jade between them before glancing up. Her eyes met his, unafraid and defiant.

  "I assume you already went through my things," she said, a wry look in her gaze.

  Mo Chen did not deny it.

  He had seen beggars in the streets of great cities, their lives measured by the weight of a single copper coin. He had seen travelers burdened with excess, carrying more than they needed, foolishly thinking they could outrun the inevitability of time.

  And then there was this girl, the embodiment of having little, yet carrying everything.

  Her belt pouch was light, its contents sparse: a single worn coin, its edges dulled by time; a few unpolished gemstones, their colors dull but still cherished; and, at the very bottom, a handful of rice grains, pitiful in number, yet stubbornly saved.

  Her careworn shoulder bag was no better. Inside, a few ragged strips of sigil paper, their ink faded and edges curling, lay beside a collection of scrolls. Their bindings were frayed, their corners softened from being read and reread too many times. Some held practical teachings, borrowed wisdom; others were the ramblings of past scholars, useless to most but carried nonetheless.

  Then there were the small things: a brass rabbit, small and unremarkable, its surface worn smooth from being held; a single frayed hair ribbon, tangled and useless; a half-eaten shaobing, stale and rough with age, its edges nibbled by something small. She had carried it anyway, unwilling to waste even a bite.

  At the bottom, a single change of clothes, no fine silk, no embroidery, just a spare set of travel-worn garments, carefully folded as if neatness could disguise the fact that it was all she had.

  Mo Chen did not react outwardly, but something within him stilled.

  She was not just a wanderer.

  She was the picture of poverty.

  Yet, she had climbed a mountain. Sought out an abandoned temple. Faced 噬魄妖 (Shì Pò Yāo) with nothing but the weight of her own determination.

  And somehow, she was still alive.

  How irritatingly stubborn.

  She exhaled, shaking her head lightly. "Then you probably already know, I don’t own much. But I never pass up a book or a scroll. If I can learn something, I do."

  That, at least, did not surprise him.

  There was a hunger in her that had nothing to do with the thinness of her frame.

  Not the desperation of the starving, but the kind of quiet, unrelenting determination that only belonged to those who had spent their whole lives searching for something just out of reach. A quiet hunger.

  Not for food. Not for survival. But for something deeper, more consuming.

  His gaze flickered to Xu Lian, traveler, a seeker, a woman who carried almost nothing, yet valued knowledge more than gold.

  How long had it been since he had met someone like that?

  His mind resisted the pull, but memory had a way of creeping in like cold seeping through cracked stone.

  There had been another.

  Long ago.

  A voice filled with endless questions, bright-eyed, filled with the kind of restless curiosity that had once been infectious. A scholar. A dreamer. Someone who had believed knowledge was a path to the heavens, not a weight to be abandoned.

  And then—

  Ash. Blood. Silence.

  That person was gone.

  The hunger for learning was something he had lost, long ago and bitterly.

  He would not make the mistake of remembering.

  Mo Chen exhaled through his nose. "Where did you learn to draw sigils?" he asked.

  Xu Lian blinked at the abrupt shift in topic but recovered quickly. "I met a master once. An old hermit in a valley far from here."

  Mo Chen did not move, but she could sense his interest, a barely perceptible shift in the air.

  "He never told me his name," she admitted, "but he was brilliant. He let me stay for a while, as long as I worked for my keep. He taught me a little, let me study the scrolls in his collection. That’s where I saw it."

  "Saw what?" Mo Chen asked.

  Xu Lian lifted her gaze fully to meet his.

  "Mentions of this place." She did a wide sweeping gesture with her scrawny arms.

  The temple was silent. A moment hung pregnant in the air, unbirthed between them.

  The wind outside whispered against the stone walls, but inside, there was only the flickering warmth of the braziers, the hush of breath against the weight of old secrets.

  Xu Lian inhaled slowly.

  "The scrolls I read spoke of an ancient sword sect, one that disappeared long ago." Her voice was quiet, but steady. "I thought, if I could find it, there might still be something left. Some record of what happened."

  Her fingers curled loosely around the amulet.

  "I never expected to actually find someone here."

  Mo Chen tilted his head slightly, his expression unreadable.

  "You sought a ruin," he mused. "And yet, you found me instead."

  Xu Lian exhaled. "Something like that."

  For a long moment, neither of them spoke.

  Then, Mo Chen let out a soft exhale, more breath than sound, before shifting to stand.

  "You should rest," he said, already turning toward the door. "Your body is still weak."

  Xu Lian watched him for a moment before speaking again.

  "Who are you, really?"

  Mo Chen paused, his back to her, his figure half-shadowed by the dim light.

  A relic of the past she sought. A survivor of a sect that no longer existed. A ghost who had severed himself from the world.

  Finally, he spoke, his voice quiet, distant.

  "The last remnant of something long forgotten."

  And then, he was gone, the sound of his robes sweeping across the stone the only trace he had ever been there at all.

  “Wait!” she called after him, “You didn’t ask me my name!”

  a lot—tense silences, buried pasts, and a stubborn traveler who refuses to give up. Xu Lian may have found more than she bargained for, but hey, that’s what happens when you go poking around in forgotten places! ??

  or ! Every bit helps keep the story going and lets me bring you even more chapters, art, and behind-the-scenes goodies! ?