Azure Sky Inner Sect – Cloud-Water Courtyard, private hot-spring cave
Day 101 – 02:14,
In dead of night the summons comes on a scrap of plain paper slipped under the gate.
No jade. No seal. Just three words in shaky handwriting: Come alone. Now.
Liàn Xing finds it when he steps outside to train.
He stares at it for a long time.
Lan Shuyin is asleep inside for once, curled on the pavilion floor with one of his spare coats as a blanket.
Zhao is passed out drunk on the roof, snoring loud enough to wake dragons.
Zhenxing is curled into a little loli-ball form on the spear shaft, wings tucked, dreaming star-dreams.
He goes alone.
The note leads him to a hidden cave behind the courtyard's spirit spring.
The entrance is sealed by a simple stone door with no formation, just a handprint worn smooth by centuries of secret visitors.
He pushes it open.
Inside is a natural hot-spring cavern lit by a single floating corpse-fire orb the colour of old guilt.
Sect Leader Yún Tiān Lóng waits on the other side, alone.
No robes of office.
Just a plain grey daoist robe, hair unbound, beard trimmed short.
He looks old, not ancient just old.
Like a man who has carried too much for too long.
He is kneeling on bare stone.
Forehead to the ground.
When Liàn Xing steps in, the old man does not rise.
His voice is hoarse, cracked from eight thousand years of giving orders no one dared question.
"I have no right to ask anything of you."
Liàn Xing stops three paces away.
The spear shaft is still back at the courtyard, but the air around him feels heavier anyway.
"Get up."
The Sect Leader does, slowly.
His knees creak.
He meets Liàn Xing's eyes, and flinches not from fear, but from recognition.
"I knew your mother," he says.
The words hit harder than any formation.
Liàn Xing's hand twitches toward a spear that isn't there.
The old man continues, voice barely above a whisper.
"Her name was Yún Xiǎo. Outer disciple. Spear genius. She vanished twenty years ago on a mission to Ring 9. We told the sect she died to void beasts. Truth is… she deserted, and took a child with her. You."
He reaches into his robe and pulls out a small jade pendant (simple, cracked, carved with a tiny spear piercing a star).
"She left this in my office the night she disappeared. Said if anyone ever came looking with her eyes, give it to them. Said the child would be born with something forbidden in his blood. Something the heavens would kill to harvest."
He holds it out.
His hand shakes.
"I didn't believe her. I thought she was mad. So I let the bounty go out when the scanners flagged you at six. I told myself it was for the good of the sect."
His voice cracks completely.
"I was wrong."
Silence.
Only the drip of water and the hiss of the corpse-fire orb.
Liàn Xing takes the pendant. The jade is warm, real warm, like it remembers being held.
He closes his fist around it.
His voice is flat.
"You let them hunt me for twelve years."
"I know."
"You let them beat me. Starve me. Break my bones."
"I know."
"You called me trash."
The old man flinches again.
"I know."
Liàn Xing's knuckles go white around the pendant.
"I should kill you."
The Sect Leader does not move.
"Yes. You should."
Liàn Xing looks at him for a long time.
Then he does something neither of them expected.
He sits.
Cross-legged on the wet stone, pendant in his lap.
And starts talking.
Not loud, not angry, just… talking.
About the alley where he was born.
About the first time an enforcer broke his arm for "looking at him wrong."
About the ninety-eight losses and the way the crowd laughed every time he fell.
About waking up in puddles of his own blood and still crawling back for more because losing was the only thing he was allowed to be good at.
About the day the spear shaft woke up and the world finally shut up.
He talks until his voice is raw.
The old man listens.
Doesn't interrupt.
Doesn't defend.
Just listens.
When Liàn Xing finishes, the cavern is quieter than a vacuum.
The Sect Leader finally speaks.
"I can't undo what was done to you.
But I can give you what is left."
He reaches into his robe again.
Pulls out a storage ring (plain, unadorned).
Inside: every resource Azure Sky has hoarded for eight thousand years.
Pills that can push Nascent Soul to half-step Soul Transformation.
Spirit veins ripped from dead planets.
The sect's hidden library of forbidden techniques.
Everything.
He places the ring on the stone between them.
"Take it.
Take the sect.
Take my life if you want it.
Just… don't become what they tried to make you."
Liàn Xing stares at the ring.
Then at the old man.
Then at the pendant in his hand.
He stands.
Walks forward.
Stops in front of the Sect Leader.
And does the last thing anyone in eight thousand years would expect.
He offers his hand.
"Get up."
The old man looks at the hand like it's a miracle.
Then takes it.
Liàn Xing pulls him to his feet.
"I don't want your sect. I don't want your life.
I want you to live long enough to watch what happens when the gutters stop being afraid."
Lian Xing releases the old man's hand and turns to leave. He stops at the door and looks back.
"Tell the elders the tournament is still on.
Tell them I'll be there. Tell them to bring everything they have."
He pauses.
"And tell them if they ever put a bounty on another child again…I'll come back.
And next time I won't be merciful."
Lian Xing walks out.
The stone door closes behind him.
The Sect Leader stands alone in the cavern.
He looks at the storage ring on the floor.
Then at the pendant Liàn Xing left behind, placed gently on the stone like a promise.
He picks it up, and closes his fist around it.
For the first time in eight thousand years, Yún Tiān Lóng cries.
Outside, the rain has stopped.
Dawn is coming.
And the boy who was once trash walks back to his courtyard carrying a piece of his mother he never knew he had.
The spear waits for him on the training ground, humming softly.
It knows tomorrow will be interesting.