“Gong Xuan. You’ve already done brilliantly.”

That refrain kept echoing in my ears, like a bell rolling through a mountain valley, whether from clan elders or from Father and Mother.

They called me the brightest star since the founding of the Li clan, a comet blazing across our ancestral sky.

In the Far East’s lone cultivation path, by twenty I had my dharma aspect etched on flesh, like seal-script carved into jade.

I strode past the old generation like a winter wind over fallen leaves, my heels dusting their footprints.

But that was still not enough, not nearly enough; my hands still couldn’t touch the blue vault of heaven.

Even among Far East warriors I wasn’t first among the ancient monsters; among the young, no one could catch my shadow.

So I had few friends, a cold moon over a quiet pond, which for a future Li clan head was a flawed sign.

Clan affairs piled up like bamboo slips on a desk, and with my temperament, I was a blade unsuited for a ledger.

None of it mattered to me; I chased only that summit, a lone peak cutting clouds, and I didn’t know why.

As for the Li clan? Father was still young; he could raise another heir, like planting a second pine.

I had no taste for family intrigue, its smoke and mirrors, its feast of dust.

Soon, Liqianyu ran into trouble, and the elders calculated her fate as ill-starred, a thread fraying toward a tragic end.

I felt nothing but a cold sky inside; if Heaven has fixed the script, why fight the river?

Time gathered like dew, and Liqianyu grew into a beautiful maiden, a spring peach in our courtyard.

A child of Li, she was not only lovely but gifted, a bright reed humming with wind.

That silly girl always sought to slack and play, like a kite tugging from a hand, yet her talent still shone.

Among the new generation she stood at the front, a banner snapping in the sun.

The Chen boys sent elders to propose, sparrows pecking at our window again and again, and Father waved them off.

What amused me was her “women’s brigade,” a flock of wild swallows making mischief all over town.

Yet each time I remembered her fate chart, my chest clogged like a river with fallen logs.

As my realm climbed, I felt that taste more clearly, a bitter herb steeping in the blood.

And I believed more in those threads in the dark, cause and effect braided like black silk.

For my bright sister, my heart held only regret, like rain tapping at a shutter that won’t open.

One day, the silly girl ran, because Father meant to marry her off, and she refused, a deer dodging the net.

He punished her with three months’ confinement, a locked courtyard gate, and that night she slipped out like moonlight.

I was in seclusion and missed it; she found the crack and slipped past the Far East’s border like mist.

My true body was bound to the Far East, a tree rooted at the brink of a breakthrough, unable to move.

As she stepped toward a spatial gate, a door of rippling water, I had no choice but to send my external avatar after her.

That region’s laws shifted like dunes in a restless wind; my avatar was weak and got pressed down like grass under snow.

I could only adapt, feeling out the currents, and reclaim my strength grain by grain, like sifting sand for gold.

Along the way we met many interesting souls, lanterns in a strange street, and trained and explored together.

I even made a true confidant, a friend warm as tea on a cold night.

I have to say, it felt easier than the Far East, like breathing on an open steppe.

I even found a girl whose nature matched my Far East, a hillside pine in the same wind, and after a pursuit, we connected heart to heart.

Her name was Kalo, and though she was misled by bad folk into opposing Eli’s people, she never truly did harm, a cloud that threatened but didn’t rain.

Kalo still minded it, like a stain on silk; I believed Eli wouldn’t care, like a river that forgives a pebble.

Just as I prepared to wander mountains and lakes with Kalo, hand in hand like twin cranes, change arrived.

The Li clan began arguing endlessly over the heir, thunder rumbling over our ancestral hall.

Oh—I forgot to explain my family’s shape, a genealogy like branches on an old cypress.

Father heads the Li clan, a lantern at the gate, and he has seven wives, seven stars in our house.

I was born of his third wife, a mortal woman, and in our clan’s turmoil she died, a candle snuffed in a draft.

I am Father’s legitimate eldest son, and Liqianyu is his youngest daughter, a small blossom clinging to the twig.

Besides us two, there are eight acknowledged children bearing the Li name, like beads on a string; what lies in shadow, who can say?

Father is not all bad; at least he gave the ten children care, a steady hand pouring tea.

Liqianyu is his most pampered girl, lively like he was in youth, though she was a girl and fate wore thorns.

As for my other brothers and sisters, they were neither here nor there, reeds in a shallow marsh.

They never respected me as eldest, treating me as the future gatekeeper, a doorman under the plaque.

Only because I said I didn’t want to join the power struggle, a sword refusing to be drawn.

Really? Are people that foolish, fog in their eyes?

Do they not see the mountain right before them?

I said I wouldn’t join only to protect them, a canopy over saplings, and at just over thirty my cultivation crushed our ten grand elders like clay cups.

How could the clan let me wander free, a dragon in open water?

With their minds set, my second brother even brought his men to posture before me, a rooster crowing at dawn.

Laughable. I already held the Clan Master’s token, a jade command at my waist; if I wished, I could pinch their lives out like dousing candles.

The Li clan’s power was at high noon, a sun at zenith, so blind juniors were inevitable, moths to flame.

I thought they’d make noise at most, a drum without war, not strike; yet while my true body secluded, someone slipped poison near me, a snake in the grass.

If not for my profound art long beyond mortal, a crane among chickens, my path would’ve been crippled for life, a river dammed with stone.

So I saw the clan’s chaos clearly, dust swirling in a courtyard, and why Father gave me the token so early.

Once I broke the current barrier, a shell of ice, I’d be first in the Li clan, a peak above peaks.

Those power-hungry heirs who dragged us toward decline were dry leaves in my palm; one thought, and they’d crumble to ash.

So I ended seclusion; the Li clan could not spin any longer, a wheel wobbling on the axle.

I couldn’t pour all my energy into that other world, like a river split; I only hoped my external avatar would manage.

After I finished setting the clan in order, sweeping the hall like a broom through fallen petals, I learned the Far East secret realm was closing.

That closing was easy to foresee; the ancients said two worlds were divided by a mirror, a sheet of sky-glass.

When the mirror shattered, the worlds touched, ripples crossing a pond; now, for some reason, the mirror had mended.

Soon we would be split apart again, a curtain dropping between stages.

To see those friends again would take time, long as winter night.

Over there, an ancient malice seemed mixed in, like iron filings in water, and that man who looked exactly like Eli was a riddle knotted tight.

I could only hope they were safe, lamps kept from wind.

This is the universe tens of thousands of years later; when I brought Kalo here, I felt the wrongness at once, a chill under a spring sun.

The rich mana was gone, rivers run dry, and the air’s energy was pitiful, a thin broth without salt.

I grabbed a passerby, asked, and learned this place had changed beyond recognition, a hometown under new towers.

I had only meant to wander and remember old friends, footsteps on old paths vanished like tides.

The old terrain was gone; high-rises stood everywhere, forests of steel, and many didn’t know even the simplest rune, moss scraped off stone.

As I was about to leave, a soul-message reached me, a warm thread through cold fog, and it struck deep.

Yes, they were alive, all of them, not one missing, a tally complete as a string of beads.

I turned to Kalo, now my wife, sunlight on her sleeve, and asked, “Shall we go see them?”

“If we don’t, why did we come?” she said, a smile like a crescent moon.

“Fair point,” I said, my heart easing like wind through pines.

“Then, my husband?” she teased, a bell-soft voice.

“Let’s go, my lady,” I answered, and we stepped forward, two cranes lifting into the blue.