The night after Da-Li's rescue, Chen Mu did not sleep.

He lay on his rough cot in Old Man Bao's hut, staring up at the darkened ceiling beams where shadows pooled and shifted with each flicker of the banked hearth. The wood grain patterns seemed to writhe in the dim orange glow — ancient whorls and knots that had witnessed decades, perhaps centuries while they were still living flora, before being shaped into shelter. Outside, the wind moved through the pine trees with a sound like distant breathing, rhythmic and patient and utterly indifferent to human concerns.

Old Man Bao's snoring provided a familiar counterpoint — a gentle, wheezing rasp that Chen Mu had grown to find comforting over the past months. The old man slept deeply, as those who have worked honestly their entire lives often do, untroubled by the kinds of questions that now churned through Chen Mu's mind like storm-tossed waves.

The Azure Cloud Sect's silence is somehow my fault?

The thought was absurd. He turned it over in his mind, examining it from every angle like a strange stone found on a riverbank, trying to understand its weight and texture. How could he — a mere mortal, a man with no memory beyond the last six months, no connection to the cultivation world beyond whispered village stories — be responsible for the absence of immortal practitioners who flew through clouds and commanded the elements?

And yet.

The certainty sat in his chest like a cold stone, immovable and heavy. It wasn't logical. It wasn't rational. It was simply known, the way one knows the sun will rise or that water flows downhill. Some part of him — some deep, instinctive part that operated in a language his conscious mind couldn't quite translate — recognized the silence on the mountain as a wound he had caused.

But how?

And why?

He sat up slowly, the rough linen of his bedding rustling in the quiet. Moving with the careful precision that had become second nature, he avoided the spots where the floorboards creaked, where his weight would disturb Bao's hard-earned rest. The window drew his attention.

Beyond it, the night was crystal-clear: the kind of cold, bright darkness that comes only to mountain valleys far from the smoke and lights of cities. Stars blazed overhead with an intensity that still sometimes took his breath away — there were thousands upon thousands of them, scattered across the void like grains of rice spilled across black silk. He had once told Xiao Hua that they were other suns — impossibly distant, with worlds of their own spinning around them — and she had laughed and called him a dreamer. But he knew this to be true, the same way he knew a hundred other impossible things that had no place in a simple villager's mind.

In the distance, barely visible as a darker shadow against the star-dusted sky, rose the northern peaks. The Azure Cloud Mountain dominated them all — it was a massive presence that should have been crowned with lights, with the glow of formations and the ethereal radiance of cultivators moving through the night on their patrol routes.

Should have been.

But there was only darkness now. Only silence.

And in that silence, the natural order was breaking down like flesh gone to rot.

Spirit beasts were growing bold and corrupted with no Sect there to put down the threats before they became truly dangerous.

Hunters were being torn apart in territories that had been safe for generations.

The Boar King — a creature that should have been merely dangerous was becoming a full-on demonic beast: something cruel, something that killed not for food but for the joy of killing.

And tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that...

It might not be a hunter who stumbled back into the village bleeding. It might be little An-An, gathering herbs for her grandmother's tea. It might be Xiao Hua, bringing lunch to workers in the upper fields, her smile bright and her heart full of plans for a future that suddenly seemed terribly fragile.

It might even be Old Man Bao, shuffling along a forest path on his creaking knees, humming one of his endless collection of bawdy songs about farmers' daughters and traveling merchants.

Chen Mu's hands clenched on the windowsill, his knuckles going white. The wood groaned softly under the pressure, and he forced himself to ease his grip. Sometimes he forgot his own strength — forgot that his "simple mortal" body, even without Qi or martial cultivation, was still much stronger than an average man should be.

I cannot let that happen.

The decision formed in his mind with a clarity that surprised him, crystallizing out of the chaos of his thoughts like ice forming on still water. He would go to the northern caves. He would face the Boar King. He would kill it, or die trying.

Because that was apparently what this body had been made to do.

Those beautiful, terrible movements he practiced each dawn in the mist-shrouded clearing — they were not art, however much they might resemble it. They were not meditation, however much peace they sometimes brought him.

No. They were tools. Tools created for killing. Instruments of death, honed to perfection by someone he could no longer remember being, waiting in his muscles and bones and sinews to be properly employed.

And if he died?

He stared out at the stars, at those distant suns burning in the void, and felt a strange calm settle over him.

If he died, perhaps that would be fitting? Perhaps whatever sins his forgotten past contained — and he was increasingly certain there were sins, dark and deep and terrible, for how could he have learned so much about death without having been its instrument — deserved such an ending?

Perhaps the peaceful dream of Chen Mu had always been a lie. A temporary, a brief respite granted by merciful amnesia before the bill came due.

But at least the village would be safe.

That thought brought comfort. Not happiness, exactly, but something close to peace. If his death could purchase their continued safety, if his life could be spent to buy them even a few more months or years of sunrise and harvest and children's laughter... Then perhaps he was not entirely damned. Perhaps some small measure of redemption might be carved from the wreckage of whatever he had been before.

He stood there for a long time, watching the stars wheel slowly overhead, listening to Bao's gentle snoring and the wind's patient song. The decision was made. There was nothing left but to wait for dawn.

And to say goodbye to the only peace he'd ever known.

He moved through the pre-dawn gloom of the hut, a ghost given purpose. Every action was methodical, a small, silent ritual of farewell. He took the supple waterskin from its peg by the door. It was a simple thing, made from the tanned hide of some mountain beast, but Bao had stitched it himself, the seams tight and even. Chen Mu ran a thumb over the worn leather, feeling the faint texture, the memory of a hundred trips to the village well. He took it outside and filled it from the rain barrel, the water impossibly cold and clean, its gurgle the only sound in the sleeping world. This water wasn't a fine spirit tea served in a jade cup; it was just… life, pure and simple. He stoppered it tightly. This was a tool for survival, not a luxury.

Next came the rations. They lay on a wooden plank near the hearth: hard, dry biscuits made from coarse-ground flour and strips of salted boar meat, tough as old leather. The food of hunters and travelers, designed for sustenance, not pleasure. He wrapped them carefully in a square of oilcloth, his fingers folding the corners with a practiced precision he didn't question. As he tied the bundle with a length of twine, a memory surfaced — not of a past life, but of this one. He saw Xiao Hua, just last week, her brow furrowed in concentration, her hands dusted with flour as she helped the village women prepare these very biscuits for the hunters' winter stores. He remembered the easy laughter in her eyes as she'd teased him about his "city hands" being too soft for real work. The memory was a sharp, unexpected pang in his chest, a reminder of the simple, beautiful life he was now preparing to wager.

Finally, he took up Bao's old hunting knife. It was a heavy, practical blade, its handle wrapped in worn leather, the steel bearing the nicks and scratches of a lifetime of use. He sat on the floor before the banked hearth, the dying embers casting a faint, warm glow on his face. From his pouch, he took a smooth, flat whetstone. The sound that followed was a quiet, rhythmic prayer in the dark. Shing... shing... shing. The sound of steel on stone, a patient, meditative process. He held the blade to the firelight, examining the edge, feeling its keenness with the ball of his thumb. This was a tool that had dressed countless kills, carved wood for a hundred fires, and defended its owner from the dangers of the forest. Now, it was a weapon. It was the weight of Bao's trust, the weight of the village's safety, made manifest in his hand. It felt like more than sharpening steel — it felt like he was sharpening his very resolve, honing his purpose to a single, deadly point.

He packed everything into a simple canvas satchel. The weight of the items was negligible, but the burden they represented felt heavier than any log he had ever carried. This was the weight of a choice made, a final farewell to the man called Chen Mu.

…

Dawn came with its usual soft palette of rose and gold, bleeding across the eastern peaks like watercolor on wet paper. The transformation from night to day in the mountains was never abrupt — it was a gradual revelation, layer by layer, as light found its way into valleys and hollows that had been hidden in shadow.

Chen Mu was already awake, already dressed, already sitting by the hearth in the pre-dawn dimness. He'd rebuilt the fire from its banked coals, the small kindling crackling as flames found purchase, orange light painting the rough wooden walls with dancing patterns. The smell of woodsmoke mingled with the herbs hanging from the rafters — bundles of silverleaf and blood-knot root and a dozen other plants whose names and uses he knew intimately without remembering how he'd learned them.

He was staring into the flames, watching sparks spiral upward toward the smoke-blackened ceiling, when Old Man Bao shuffled out from behind his curtain partition.

The old man stopped short, one hand still on the fabric, his sleep-mussed hair standing up in gray tufts that would have been comical under other circumstances. His eyes — rheumy but still sharp, still capable of seeing more than most men half his age — swept over Chen Mu's rigid posture, the set of his shoulders, the way his hands rested too still on his knees.

"Ah," Bao said quietly, his voice rough with sleep and something that might have been sorrow. "So. You've decided, then."

Chen Mu looked up, and despite everything, managed a small smile. "Decided what, Old Bao?"

"Don't play games with this old man, boy!"

Bao moved to the hearth with the careful, slightly bow-legged gait of someone whose joints had logged seven decades of hard use. He lowered himself onto his own stool with a soft grunt, reaching for the iron poker to stir the coals. "I've lived on this earth for seventy-three years, and I know the face of a man who's made a hard choice. You're going out to hunt the Boar King."

There was no point in denying it.

Chen Mu had never been good at lying to Bao — the old man had an unsettling ability to see through deception, to read truth in the cant of a shoulder or the direction of a gaze.

"Yes," he said simply.

"Alone?"

"Yes."

"With no cultivation?" Bao's voice was carefully neutral, but his hands had stilled on the poker, holding it suspended over the coals. "No Qi? Nothing but that stick you practice with each morning when you think no one's watching?"

Chen Mu felt a flutter of surprised embarrassment in his chest. "You knew about that?"

"Boy, I'm old — not deaf or blind!" Bao resumed stirring the fire, adding fresh kindling with the precise movements of long practice. Small twigs first, then larger pieces, building the heat gradually. "I've known ever since the first week. You're about as subtle as a bull in a pottery shop, creeping out before dawn every morning. The floorboards might not creak under your feet — and that's another mystery right there — but old men sleep lightly, and these walls are thin."

He set the poker aside and turned to face Chen Mu fully, his weathered face serious in the growing firelight. "I've also known that you're not quite... ordinary. That much was obvious every since the day I found you wandering naked in the woods, looking like some God's abandoned statue come to life."

Bao paused, and when he continued, his voice had softened. "The way you move, boy. Like water flowing over stones — no wasted motion, no hesitation. The things you know. That business yesterday with Da-Li..." He shook his head slowly. "No simple village boy performs healing arts that would make city physicians weep with envy. No man with just 'honest labor' in his past could set a shattered bone like it was nothing more challenging than mending a fence."

The old man's eyes — pale gray, faded by age but still capable of remarkable intensity — fixed on Chen Mu with an expression that was equal parts concern and curiosity. "So. What are you, really? Some disgraced cultivator who lost his powers? An immortal playing at mortality for reasons known only to Heaven itself? Or something else entirely — something even stranger than an old man's imagination can conjure?"

Chen Mu was quiet for a long moment, feeling the weight of the question settle over him like a heavy cloak. What was he? The honest answer was both simple and impossibly complex.

"I… don't know," he said finally, and the admission felt like removing a splinter that had been lodged too deep to reach. "I really wish I did, Old Bao. I wish I could tell you some grand story that made sense of it all. But the truth is... I simply don't know."

He stared down at his hands — strong hands, now calloused a bit from honest work. Tanned from months in the sun. Hands that could set bones with surgical precision and swing a practice sword with deadly grace.

Hands that belonged to a stranger.

"All I know is that I wake up each morning with skills I don't remember learning. Knowledge I shouldn't possess. Languages that flow off my tongue without thought — sometimes I catch myself about to speak in words that aren't even from this kingdom, or from anywhere I've ever heard of. I know the names of stars that aren't visible from these mountains. I can do calculations in my head that academy scholars wouldn't be able to touch with an abacus. I can look at a water wheel and see a dozen ways to improve it, using concepts that no simple village carpenter should understand."

He looked up, meeting Bao's gaze. "And I know — know with a certainty I'can't explain — that the silence on that mountain is somehow connected to me. That whatever happened to the Azure Cloud Sect, whatever drove them away or destroyed them or silenced them... I'm responsible for it. Somehow."

"That's a heavy weight to carry," Bao observed quietly. "Especially when you don't even know if it's true."

"But what else would even make sense? I wake up in a crater with no memories, and then the mountain goes silent? That surely can't be a simple coincidence!" Chen Mu's voice was harsh with guilt.

"What if… people are getting hurt because of something I did? Something I can't even remember doing? How do I live with that, Old Bao? How do I keep accepting the kindness of this village, keep eating at your table and laughing with Xiao Hua and helping the children, when every moment of that peace might be built on..."

He trailed off, unable to finish the thought.

Bao was quiet for a long time, his gaze distant, his wrinkled hands resting on his knees. The fire crackled between them, and outside, the first birds of morning were beginning their songs — tentative at first, then growing in confidence as the sun climbed higher.

"You know what I think?" Bao said eventually.

Chen Mu waited.

"I think you're a good man, Chen Mu. Foolish, perhaps. Definitely stubborn. Possibly running from shadows that may or may not be real. But good." He leaned forward, his expression earnest. "I've lived a long time. Long enough to see all sorts of men. Good men who did terrible things. Terrible men who did good things. Men who spent their whole lives trying to atone for imaginary slights they didn't commit, and men who never felt a moment's guilt for sins they absolutely did."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

He reached out, placing one gnarled hand on Chen Mu's shoulder. "Whatever you were before — that is, if you were anything at all, if this guilt isn't just your mind trying to fill in the blanks with the worst possible story — well, it still doesn't change what you are now. Here. In this village. You've been nothing but kind and helpful and honest with us since the day I found you. That has to count for something!"

"Does it?" Chen Mu's voice was raw. "Does being kind for six months balance out whatever I might have done before? Can you atone for sins you can't even remember committing?"

"I don't know," Bao admitted. "That's a question for philosophers and monks, not for an old villager like me. But I do know this — you can't undo the past. You can only live in the present. And right now, in this present moment, there's a corrupted spirit beast threatening innocent people. And you're the only one skilled enough to have a chance against it."

He squeezed Chen Mu's shoulder. "So, maybe the question isn't whether what's happening is your fault. Maybe the question is simpler: can you protect the people who've shown you kindness? And are you willing to try, even knowing you might fail?"

Chen Mu felt something tight in his chest begin to loosen, just slightly. "You're saying I should go?"

"I'm saying you've already decided to go, and I'm not fool enough to think I could stop you even if I wanted to." Bao's grip tightened for a moment, then released. "But I am wise enough to make sure you're properly equipped. You'll take my old hunting knife, of course — the good one, with the spirit iron core. And the waterskin. And three days of dried rations, even though you'll probably be dead or victorious by nightfall."

He stood, moving to a wooden chest in the corner of the room, his movements deliberate. "And… you'll take my sword."

Chen Mu blinked. "What sword?"

"The rusty piece of shit that's been sitting in this chest for the last forty years, waiting for someone fool enough to need it." Bao lifted the lid with a creak of old hinges, rummaging through layers of cloth and moth-eaten blankets. "Found it when I was young and stupid, lying in a streambed like someone had just tossed it there. Probably some cultivator's garbage, or a bandit's stolen goods. Never have been able to sell it — no merchant wants to touch a sword that's more rust than steel. But maybe..."

He pulled out a sword in a rotting leather scabbard, the whole thing looking like it might disintegrate at a touch. "Maybe it's been waiting for you."

The weapon was a sorry sight. The scabbard was cracked and water-stained, held together more by hope than by any structural integrity. The handle wrapping had long since rotted away, leaving bare wood that was cracked and weathered. When Bao drew it partially from its sheath, the blade was orange-brown with rust, pitted and dull, looking more like an implement of farm work than a weapon.

The moment Chen Mu's eyes fell on it, a series of strange, fragmented images flashed through his mind, as vivid and startling as a lightning strike in a dark room.

…

A crowded, dusty marketplace. The smell of strange spices and roasting meat. He is a different person — weaker, paler, dressed in outrageously expensive crimson and gold robes that flash and glitter with every movement. A greasy-faced junk vendor is bowing, his smile a mask of fawning deference. "F-fifty taels of silver, Young Master? Or perhaps… perhaps just ten silver taels, if Young Master truly fancies such a… rustic piece?"

His own voice — a voice he doesn't recognize, full of an arrogant, almost theatrical confidence—booming in a narrow alleyway. "Nonsense! Do you take me for a fool, vendor? Or are you truly blind to the dormant power sleeping within this vessel?"

His own hand — pale, uncalloused, adorned with flashing, gaudy rings — hovers over a different rusty blade, this one even more pathetic than the one before him now. He closes his eyes, a dramatic performance for the watching crowd. "Incredible... this aura... so faint, so deeply hidden... like a dragon slumbering beneath centuries of dust... My divine sense detects the lingering spirit of a peerless weapon!"

The flash of gold coins, a small mountain of them, spilling onto the vendor's rickety stall. The vendor's eyes, wide with a mixture of shock and avarice.

And then, the final, impossible image: a silk handkerchief wiping away the rust, revealing not dull iron, but a gleaming, silvery-blue steel that pulses with an internal, azure light, its surface covered in intricate, glowing patterns like captured starlight.

…

Chen Mu blinked, and the images were gone, leaving him standing in the middle of Bao's hut, the scent of woodsmoke and old herbs once again filling his nostrils. His heart was hammering against his ribs. Then, he shook his head, a physical motion to clear the strange phantoms from his mind. It was just a fanciful daydream, of course. The kind of ridiculous, heroic tale a storyteller might spin. A rusty sword turning into a magical treasure? Preposterous!

Nevertheless, his hands reached for the sword, closing around the rough wooden handle with a grip that felt instantly, impossibly familiar. The blade felt perfectly comfortable in his hand. How he knew that when he couldn't remember ever holding a sword before, he had no idea. But he could feel it — the precise center of mass, the weight distribution that made it an extension of his arm rather than a separate object. Even through the rust and damage, even though the blade was dull and pitted, it still felt... right in a way that made his throat tight.

"You'll sharpen it, and take it with you," Bao asserted, his voice brooking no argument. "And you'll come back, do you hear me? I didn't spend six months teaching you the village life just to have you die stupidly in a cave. I didn't share my fire and my food and my stories just to lose another son."

The last word hung in the air between them — unplanned, unintended, but once spoken, impossible to take back.

Chen Mu felt his eyes sting. "Old Bao—"

"Eat," Bao said gruffly, turning back to the hearth where a pot of morning congee had begun to bubble. "Whatever fool's errand you're on, you'll do it with a full belly. That much I can ensure."

They ate breakfast in silence that was both comfortable and weighted with everything they couldn't say. The congee was thick and warming, flavored with dried mushrooms and a precious pinch of salt. Bao had added extra — Chen Mu noticed, said nothing, but felt the gesture settle into his chest alongside all the other small kindnesses the old man had shown him.

When they finished, Chen Mu took the time to get the sword combat-ready, before strapping it across his back in its rotting scabbard.

He was checking the straps one final time when Bao spoke again.

"Chen Mu."

He turned.

The old man was standing by the hearth, his weathered face creased with emotion he was trying to hide and failing. "Whatever you find up there — whatever you face, whatever you learn about yourself — remember that you always have a home here. Do you understand me? Always. Whether you come back in an hour or a year or a decade. Whether you come back as Chen Mu or as whoever you used to be. This door will always be open to you."

Chen Mu couldn't speak past the tightness in his throat. He simply nodded, once, and hoped that Bao understood everything he couldn't put into words.

Then he stepped out into the morning, closing the door softly behind him, and began the long walk toward the northern caves.

Toward whatever answers or death waited there.

Toward the ending of the peaceful dream called Chen Mu.

…

However, somehow, while he was working on the sword, the news of his departure had managed to spread through the village with the swift inevitability of wildfire in dry grass. Chen Mu had intended to leave quietly, to slip away without further fuss or ceremony. But, in a small village where everyone knew everyone else's business, where gossip was currency and privacy was a foreign concept, such intentions were naive at best.

By the time he reached the village square, there was already a small crowd there waiting for him.

Widow Lan was the first to reach him. She moved with surprising speed for a woman of her years, her face creased with worry, her hands clutching a small cloth bundle. She pressed it into his hands without a word, and when he unfolded it, he found medicinal herbs — her entire precious supply of silverleaf and blood-knot root, carefully dried and prepared.

"For wounds," she said, her voice thick. Tears tracked down her weathered cheeks, and she made no attempt to wipe them away. "You come back, you hear? You come back and tell me I wasted good herbs worrying about nothing!"

"I'll… do my best, Auntie Lan," he managed.

Chief Tian arrived next, moving with the ponderous dignity of his office. He was carrying the village's only decent, military-grade spear — a genuine soldier's weapon made of plain iron that had been passed down through three generations, used mainly for hunting and, once, for driving off bandits in his grandfather's time.

"Take this," he said gruffly, holding it out.

Chen Mu shook his head respectfully. "Thank you, Chief Tian, but I couldn't possibly. That's a family heirloom—"

"It's a tool," Tian interrupted, his voice firm. "And tools are meant to be used. If you're going up there to protect us all, then by all the gods and Buddhas, you'll go there properly armed!"

"I have a sword—"

"What you have is a rust-eaten piece of garbage that probably couldn't cut butter." Tian thrust the spear forward. "Take it. I will not argue with you any more."

Chen Mu looked at the weapon, at the care with which it had been maintained, the respect it represented. He thought about refusing again. But then he saw the fear in Tian's eyes — not fear of death, but fear of helplessness, of being unable to protect his people, of watching a young man march to his death with inadequate tools.

"I'll borrow it," Chen Mu said finally, accepting the spear. "And I'll return it to you personally."

"See that you do," Tian said, but his relief was visible.

The children came next, a chaotic swarm of them, all talking at once. Little An-An was at the front of them, her pet fox — leg still bandaged from Chen Mu's treatment — tucked under one arm. Her face was blotchy with tears, but she stood with fierce determination, her small chin jutted out stubbornly.

"You have to come back," she declared, her child's voice cracking with emotion. "You have to! Because... because Yín Lìng's leg isn't fully healed yet, and you promised to tell us the rest of the story about the metal birds that fly between the stars, and... and..."

She couldn't continue. Chen Mu knelt down, bringing himself to her eye level, and gently wiped the tears from her cheeks with his thumb.

"I promise," he said softly, "that whether I come back or not, someone will finish that story for you. Stories don't die, An-An. They live forever, passed from one person to the next. That's the magic of them."

"But I want you to tell it!" she whispered.

"I know. And I'll try." He kissed her forehead. "Be brave, little one. Take care of your… Yin Ling."

He stood, his heart heavy, and found himself surrounded by more villagers. Each one had something to offer — a word of encouragement, a pressed hand, a blessing muttered under their breath. These people who had been strangers six months ago, who had taken in a lost young man with no past and asked for nothing in return except honest work and decent company.

He was memorizing their faces, he realized. Committing each one to memory with the desperate intensity of someone who knows he might never see them again.

And then the crowd parted, and there she was.

Xiao Hua stood at the edge of the square, backlit by the morning sun, and Chen Mu felt his heart skip a beat.

She was wearing her everyday dress — simple undyed linen, practical and worn — but she'd taken time with her hair, weaving it into a complex braid that fell over one shoulder. It was a style she usually reserved for festivals and special occasions. Her face was composed, but he could see the tension in her shoulders, the way her hands were clenched at her sides.

She wasn't crying.

Somehow, that made it worse.

The crowd seemed to sense the weight of the moment. They fell back, creating a bubble of privacy around the two of them, though Chen Mu was acutely aware that every eye in the village was watching, that this scene would be remembered, and discussed, and embellished for years to come.

"So," Xiao Hua said, her voice steady. "You're really doing this."

It wasn't a question.

"Xiao Hua—" he began.

"Don't." She took a step forward, and her control wavered for just a moment, her voice cracking on the word. "Don't apologize. Don't tell me it will be fine. Don't insult me with comfortable lies that we both know aren't true."

He closed his mouth, waiting. She deserved that much — to speak her piece without interruption. To express the feelings he could see burning in her eyes.

She took a breath, steadying herself, and when she spoke again, her voice was firm.

"Tell me why. And don't say it's to protect the village, because we both know the men could organize a hunting party. Don't say it's because you're strong, because I've seen you struggle with heavy loads like any other man. Tell me the real reason why Chen Mu — who wants nothing more than peace and simple happiness, who tells stories to children and fixes water wheels and saves injured foxes — is throwing himself at a corrupted spirit beast that just tore apart our best hunter."

Chen Mu was quiet for a long moment, trying to find words for something he barely understood himself. The morning sun was warm on his back, and somewhere nearby, a rooster — uncaring of the drama taking place in the village square — was crowing his declaration of the new day.

"Because it's my fault," he said finally.

Xiao Hua stared at him. "Your — what are you talking about? The beast has been growing bolder for months, since before you even arrived in the village—"

"No. Not the beast."

He gestured northward, toward the peaks that rose above the village like silent guardians. "The silence. The Azure Cloud Sect. Whatever happened to them that made them stop their patrols, that left this whole region unprotected..." He pressed a hand to his chest, feeling his heart beat steady and strong beneath his palm. "I can feel it here, Little Flower. I don't know how or why, but their absence is connected to me. To whatever I was before I lost my memories. And if that's true, then every person hurt because those cultivators are not here to maintain order, every family destroyed by emboldened spirit beasts — all of that blood is on my hands."

"But… but that's insane!" Xiao Hua said flatly. "You're just a mortal, like the rest of us. You have no Qi, no martial arts cultivation, no—"

"I know." He held up one hand, cutting her off gently. "I know how it sounds. Believe me, I've spent half the night trying to convince myself I was wrong, that this feeling is just my mind being dramatic. But I can't shake it, Little Flower. It's not just a thought. It's a knowing. Like knowing which direction is north, or knowing that fire is hot. I don't understand it, but I can't ignore it either."

He took a step closer to her, close enough to see the gold flecks in her brown eyes, the pattern of freckles across her nose that always made him smile. "And even if I'm wrong about the Azure Cloud Sect — even if that guilt is misplaced, even if I'm just chasing shadows that have nothing to do with me — the beast is real. The danger is real. And I..."

He paused, trying to find words.

"I'm not just a simple villager who forgot his past, Xiao Hua. I really wish I was. But I'm not."

"What does that mean?" Her voice was barely a whisper.

Instead of answering directly, he set down the spear and unslung the rusty sword from his back. Drew it from its rotting scabbard with a soft rasp of corroded metal. The morning sunlight caught on the pitted blade, turning the rust to gold and orange and red — like the sword had been dipped in fire.

"Watch," he said quietly.

And then… he moved.

Not the full speed he was capable of — he'd never dared show that to anyone — but enough. Enough to demonstrate that the man called Chen Mu was not entirely what he appeared to be.

The sword became a blur of motion, tracing patterns in the morning air so complex and precise they seemed to write characters in the space between heartbeats. Thrusts that would have found the heart through the gaps in armor. Parries that would have turned aside steel with the economy of effort. A spinning strike that would have taken a head from shoulders with casual, terrible efficiency.

He moved through a full sequence — sixty-two moves, flowing from one to the next with the inexorable logic of water flowing downhill. His feet never quite touched the ground, or touched it so lightly that he left no visible prints in the dust. His breathing never changed, remaining steady and controlled despite the speed of the movements.

And then, as suddenly as he'd started, he stopped.

Returned to stillness.

Sheathed the sword with a soft click.

The square was silent. Every villager was staring, their faces reflecting various degrees of shock and awe and fear. Even the children had gone quiet, their eyes wide.

Xiao Hua's face had gone pale. "What..."

She had to stop, swallow, try again.

"What was that?"

"I don't know," Chen Mu said honestly. "I don't know where I learned it. I don't know who taught me. I don't even know if I learned it in any normal sense. It's all just... there. In the back of my mind. In my muscles. In my bones. It's like… like my body knows things my mind has forgotten." He met her eyes. "So you see? I'm not just a simple villager, Xiao Hua. I'm something else. Something that knows how to kill. And if that's what I am — if that's what this body was made for — then maybe, just maybe, I can use it for something good. Something that matters."

She stared at him for a long moment, her face cycling through shock, hurt, anger, fear, and finally settling into something that looked like resigned understanding.

"What you are… is an idiot," she said, her voice thick.

"Probably."

"…A stubborn idiot."

"Old Bao says the same thing."

"And if you die..." Her voice cracked, and she had to stop. Swallow. Start again. "If you die, I'm going to be furious with you. Do you understand? I'll never forgive you! I'll... I'll spit on your grave! I'll tell everyone what a fool you were. I'll even make sure they write it on your memorial stone: 'Here lies Chen Mu, who was very stupid.'"

Despite everything, he felt his lips quirk into a small smile. "That's fair."

"So don't die," she said fiercely. "Don't you dare die."

"I'll try—"

"Trying isn't good enough!"

She closed the distance between them in three quick steps, grabbing the front of his tunic with both hands, her face turned up to his. "Promise me. Promise me you'll survive! Promise me you won't do anything stupidly heroic. Promise me that whatever happens in those caves, you'll remember that you have people here who care about you. People who need you."

He wanted to make that promise. Wanted it with an intensity that was almost physical pain. Wanted to tell her that yes — of course he would come back, and they would grow old together in this village, and tell stories to their grandchildren and everything will be simple and peaceful and good.

But he'd never been good at lying to her.

"I… promise," he said carefully, choosing each word with precision, "that I'll fight to come back. That I won't give up. That I'll remember what I have to live for." He reached up, gently covering her hands with his own. "Beyond that... I don't know what I'll be facing up there, Little Flower. I don't know if these skills I have — whatever they are, wherever they came from — will be enough. I don't know if I'm walking toward victory or just a slightly dramatic death. I can only promise that I'll try. That I'll do everything in my power to return to you."

Her eyes searched his face, and he could see her parsing his words, understanding what he wasn't saying. She was smart, his Little Flower. Too smart to accept comfortable lies, even when they were what she desperately wanted to hear.

"Then… I'll believe in you," she said finally, her voice barely above a whisper. "Even if you don't believe in yourself. Even if you think you're probably going to die. I'll believe that you'll come back. Because..." She stopped, and for the first time, tears began to slip down her cheeks. "Because I don't know what I'll do if you don't."

She kissed him.

It was desperate and fierce and tasted of salt tears and morning tea. Her hands fisted in his tunic, pulling him down to her, and he wrapped his arms around her, holding her close, trying to memorize the feel of her.

The warmth of her body.

The scent of her hair.

The way she fit against him like a missing piece he hadn't known he needed.

When they finally broke apart, she was crying openly, but she didn't look away. Didn't hide her tears or try to compose herself for the watching village.

"Go," she said. "Before I do something stupid myself, like chain you to a tree."

"Little Flower—"

"Go, Chen Mu. Face your stupid beast. Try not to die. And then..." She managed a watery smile. "And then come back and finish telling me about those metal birds that fly between the stars. We'll sit by the water wheel, and you'll tell me your impossible stories, and I'll pretend not to believe them while secretly hanging on to every word."

He wanted to say more. Wanted to tell her that she'd been the light in his darkness, that her laughter had been the first thing to make him feel human again, that the future she described was everything he ever wanted.

Instead, he just nodded. Stepped back. Retrieved the spear from where he'd set it down.

And turned toward the northern path.

The villagers parted before him, creating a corridor through the square. Every face was solemn. Every eye was watching. This was the kind of moment that would become story, would be told and retold until the details blurred into legend.

The strange young man with white hair and indigo eyes, walking toward certain death with nothing but a rusty sword and borrowed spear. The moment before everything changed.

Chen Mu didn't look back. Couldn't look back. Because if he saw Xiao Hua's face one more time, saw the tears and the fear and the desperate hope in her eyes, he might not have had the strength to keep walking.

And so, he kept his eyes forward, his steps steady, and left the village behind.

Left Chen Mu's peace behind.

And walked toward whatever truth — or death — the mountain held.

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